Brexit is sucking the BBC into Facebook’s global information war with Russia Tensions increased last year with the Salisbury attack, but the conflict has it’s roots in the 2016 referendum

While the full extent of Russian interference in the EU referendum is not yet known, Vladimir Putin’s regime is in an open media war with news outlets in Britain as we approach Brexit.

“[The BBC] can boost Britain’s reputation on the world stage”

Tit-for-tat exchanges are escalating. The media regulators in both London and Moscow have been drawn into the fray.

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There have been formal charges of bias, accusations of censorship and so-called “doxings” of journalists, whose identities have been outed on social media and in print.

The mood is reminiscent of the expulsion and counter-expulsion of diplomats and spies during the Cold War, and more recently following the attempted assassination of former Russian spy and MI6 agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.

These are skirmishes in ‘infowars’ – the global tussle for influence in news – and among the matters at stake is the reputation for impartiality of the BBC, not to mention the international perception of Britain and its values, just as it stands apart from former European partners.

The Scottish hack

The hostility has its roots in the 2016 referendum campaign when a Russian troll factory – the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency – posted thousands of messages on voting day under the hashtag #ReasonsToLeaveEU.

Tensions increased last year with the Salisbury attack, after which the two Russian suspects were featured on Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT saying they had gone to Wiltshire as tourists.

“Facebook purged 289 pages and 75 fake accounts linked to Sputnik employees and used for anti-NATO propaganda.”

The current media war was triggered on 5 November with the hacking of the Institute of Statecraft, a charity in Fife, Scotland, created to challenge state-sponsored “disinformation”. The little-known Institute has had £2.2m in Foreign Office funding.

Soon after the hack, RT ran a story headlined: “In Her Majesty’s Service: How UK Purportedly Pushes Anti-Russian Propaganda in EU.” It was based on leaked documents from the Institute’s “Integrity Initiative”, published online by the hacktivist group Anonymous.

Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan – facing questions that the Institute was hostile to the Labour Party – told Parliament that hacked documents were “published and amplified by Kremlin news channels”.

Then, on 20 December, the media regulator Ofcom, which began an investigation into RT’s UK output earlier last year, said it had found seven RT programmes (including coverage of Salisbury) to be in breach of rules on due impartiality.

Russian targets BBC

The finding raised the possibility of loss of licence for the Kremlin-backed channel. The next day Moscow responded by announcing an investigation by Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, into BBC World News and the BBC websites.

The following weekend the drama returned to Scotland as the Sunday Times turned its fire on the Edinburgh-based Russian internet radio station Sputnik (part of a global state-funded network). The paper identified eight Sputnik staff and quoted Scottish MEP Alex Cole-Hamilton saying the station was a Kremlin stooge.

RT – which claims UK titles from The Guardian to the Telegraph conspire in “deceitful agitprop directed at Russia” – accused the Sunday Times of an “appalling McCarthyist hit-piece”. Its editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan referenced Nazi Germany: “Happy upcoming 1933th, my British friends.”

Days later, the names of 44 BBC journalists in Russia – mostly Russian citizens – were published on social media by For Mother Russia, a group which attacked the Sunday Times for putting “psychological pressure” on Russian journalists.

A shocked BBC called on the Russian authorities “to investigate this worrying development”.

RT returned to the chessboard by seeking judicial review of Ofcom’s findings, thus calling into question Britain’s position as a well-regulated hub for global news.

Next, Facebook purged 289 pages and 75 fake accounts linked to Sputnik employees and used for anti-NATO propaganda.

Last week Roskomnadzor announced proceedings against Facebook and Twitter for failing to comply with legislation requiring them to store Russian users’ data on servers in Russia.

On Thursday, the Kremlin announced a media crackdown with fines of 1m rubles (£12,000) for publishers deemed responsible for “unreliable socially-significant information”, and 15 days jail for distribution of material “expressing in indecent form a clear disrespect for society, the state, the official state symbols of the Russian Federation and bodies exercising state power”.

The BBC must…

The BBC finds itself sucked into this unseemly quarrel when it is fighting to maintain its credibility at home during the polarising political crisis over Brexit.

The £85m-a-year funding boost it received from the Foreign Office (shortly before the EU referendum) has been partly used to target new audiences in Russia and Korea.

That makes it a state-supported threat to Putin, as well as a broadcaster with a global audience of almost 400m, an enviable share of a market contested by state-backed networks from China to Qatar.

But, however intense this battle for “soft power”, BBC journalists must never consider themselves as participants.

By holding the UK’s leaders to account at home they highlight propaganda machines elsewhere, and boost Britain’s reputation on the world stage.