The writers’ guild

All of the YouTube channels under analysis appeared to be pulling many of their scripts for their videos from the at least five fringe, far-right websites.

For instance, one of the videos posted by Gotcha News Network, “BOMBSHELL! STORMY DANIELS CONNECTION TO OBAMA’S OVAL OFFICE! ARE WE SURPRISED?” (pictured above), featured a voiceover reading text directly from an article on Mad World News, a website often pushing xenophobic or racist narratives and conspiracy theories. The video and corresponding article falsely alleged former U.S. President Barack Obama and adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels had engaged in a “coordinated effort” to smear U.S. President Donald Trump but provided no evidence — likely because none exists — to support the claim.

Embellished with a profile photo of Trump, another channel named American News Today also produced misleading information targeting Democrats and lifted its content from far-right websites. For example, on March 11, the channel posted a highly spun video titled, “Nancy Pelosi Loses Her Head Over Trump — Pushes False Claim That Donald Cut $700M From CDC…”, the script for which was lifted from an article on another dubious website, The Patriot Journal.

Screenshot of the video, in which a narrator said that “Pelosi has sounded less and less coherent in recent months.” (Source: American News Today/archive)

In this instance, the script presented a highly editorialized, often misogynistic take on Nancy Pelosi’s statement regarding Trump’s proposed CDC budget cuts. The video incorrectly asserted that Pelosi’s criticism had been misleading, claiming that it was “not even remotely true” that the U.S. president had tried to cut funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The argument was twisted to laud the U.S. president for ultimately increasing the funding for the CDC, ignoring the fact that Trump’s initial budget draft had indeed included budget cuts for the agency.

The article and the video provided no evidence to support their assertions, which were a deliberate mischaracterization of Pelosi’s words.

The DFRLab searched YouTube for another headline from a Patriot Journal article — “Trump Plans New Swing State Vehicle — Supporters Are Looking To The Skies For Donald’s New Blimp” — and found that four channels had plagiarized the text of the article and used it as a video script.

Screenshot of a YouTube search using an article headline from The Patriot Journal. Each thumbnail image showed minor editing done to make the video appear distinct from one another. (Source: YouTube/archive)

The thumbnails for the four videos were nearly identical, but there were minor edits made to each in a likely attempt to avoid YouTube’s duplication and copyright filters. All four included the same image of Trump looking into a solar eclipse without sunglasses on the left and a blue background overlaid with “Special Report” at right.

The actual image of the U.S. president was distorted as if in a fun house mirror, with one visage artificially squashed and another lengthened. Additionally, the “Special Report” text was similarly manipulated to be different between thumbnails. Finally, some of the thumbnails included overlaid text such as “BREAKING” or “TRUMP PLANS NEW,” further creating a similar but still unique thumbnail.

If the incentive for these channels was financial in nature, these small tweaks to presentation could contribute to a level of differentiation that would avoid detection of spam posting, a violation of YouTube’s Community Guidelines. Indeed, the most obvious description for these videos is likely spam: repetitive, non-politically motivated (though still ideological) content designed to generate clicks and, therefore, revenue.

Assuming the videos were spam, the channels could possibly have been seeking to join YPP, which allows content creators to monetize their videos. YPP is built around a channels with a certain audience size and viewership rate, which can often be attained quickly by posting emotive or salacious content.

The content across the channels’ videos was not exclusively sourced from The Patriot Journal. The DFRLab identified other websites the videos pulled material from, including the previously mentioned Mad World News, as well as Red Wave 2020, Conservative Brief, and Explain Life.

Two of those websites — Explain Life and Conservative Brief — appeared to be closely linked. A comparison of the two websites’ XML sitemaps, a file that lists all public URLs of a domain, showed that the corresponding URLs for each had last been modified within minutes of one another on many days.