https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/22/1734935/--ReleaseTheMemo-shows-how-Republicans-Fox-News-and-Russian-bots-can-cooperate-to-make-fake-news
"Now, in the wake of the initial blast, #ReleaseTheMemo looks much less like a news story, and much more like a test run for coordination between Republicans in Congress, Fox News pundits, and Russian media bots. In this case, the memo that had Republicans weepy was generated by Devin Nunes. The idea that Nunes, who has already cried wolf on this same topic at least twice in the past year, should be taken as a reputable source on anything related to FBI surveillance is ridiculous. Still, Republicans presented this as a document that would shake Washington to its roots. On Thursday evening, Sean Hannity made this memo the focus of his program. Hannity presented the memo as definitive proof that the investigation by Robert Mueller would be forced to conclusion. "Your witch hunt is now over. Time to close the doors." Then on Friday morning, Twitter exploded with the hash tag #ReleaseTheMemo. The demand came with eerie clockwork precision from thousands of accounts, including from that of Donald Trump Jr. But many of these accounts shared a common feature — there was no human being on the other end. The latest attempt by some Republicans in Congress to discredit the Trump-Russia investigation has been embraced by Russian bots and trolls on social media. At the same time, the “news” division at Fox, along with Breitbart and other conservative sites turned the memo into their top story of the morning—stories that Republicans then picked up as “proof” of their earlier accusations. All of which suggests that #ReleaseTheMemo isn’t a news story — it’s the latest test of a weaponized media system. There’s something extremely notable in the Fox News stories concerning the memo — how they described the memo itself."
