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The websites have names like DC Weekly and Chicago Crier. They are filled with thousands of legitimate-looking stories, plucked from real news websites and rewritten by artificial intelligence. But ´óÏó´«Ã½ Trending has found that these sites are part of a wide-ranging influence operation designed to insert false stories into political debates, over Ukraine and now gradually shifting to the US election campaign.

One of the people involved in the operation is John Dougan, a former Florida police officer now living in Moscow. Online evidence links him to the network of sites, many of which reference American cities and are populated by fake journalists – their photos swiped from other websites across the internet.
The network is only one of a series of Russian disinformation operations which experts believe is part of a wide effort to influence American public opinion in advance of November’s presidential election.

Presenter: Mike Wendling
Reporter: Shayan Sardarizadeh
Additional reporting: Olga Robinson and Paul Myers
Producer: Olivia Lang
Editor: Flora Carmichael