JUDY WOODRUFF: As we prepare
for elections next week, we
want to step back and take a
close look at what Russian
officials did to try to
sway the vote in 2016.
That's the focus of a new
book, "Cyberwar," by Kathleen
Hall Jamieson, a noted scholar
of American politics.
We began with a key question:
Did Russia turn the outcome
of the last presidential race?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON,
Author, "Cyberwar: How Russian
Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect
a President": I believe
it's highly probable that
they did, not certain,
but highly probable.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And
what do you base it on?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:
Three arguments.
First, the social media
intervention, which
is the Russian trolls
marauding around in
cyberspace, pretending they're
U.S. citizens, had a message
aligned with candidate Trump's.
They had identified the right
voters they needed to mobilize,
demobilize and shift in
order to help elect him.
They had messages that had
a lot of viral exposure, so
they reached a lot of people.
But we're not completely sure,
although they did have the
entire Democratic playbook, and
so they had the means, whether
they actually reached the
right voters in the three key
states.
The case is tentative.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You make a point
of saying that they zeroed
in on the vulnerabilities
in our system, the voters
who could make a difference.
For example, you write about
the voters who could be
persuaded to go with Jill Stein,
the Green Party candidate,
African-American voters.
You are giving the Russians
a lot of credit, aren't you?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: One
doesn't have to be really smart,
if one is a Russian who can
read English and one follows the
U.S. media, to see the playbook
for a campaign consultant
inside our news structures.
I quoted in the book extended
passages in U.S. mainstream
media explaining which states
Donald Trump needs to win,
Hillary Clinton needs to win,
what kinds of voters they need
to approach, where
each is falling short.
And there are even stories
to tell you what the best
way would be to reach them.
And they not only had that
information, but they also had
the complete playbook from the
Clinton campaign,
including the voter turnout
models in key states.
And then they had
one more advantage.
Our social media platforms
are designed to sell
us to advertisers.
And as a result, they have
built into them the very means
of reaching the target voter.
And unlike the past, when you
had to be really sophisticated
as a time-buyer, you can now
use those as a layperson
to reach the right
people efficiently.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And I want to ask
you some more about the media.
But, first, I want to ask
you about the language.
I mean, you talk about trolls,
you talk about operatives, but
you call them Russian discourse
saboteurs.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:
My theory of how the
election outcome was changed
is that the discourse
climate was changed.
So, we know from our past
research that, when you change
the balance of the messages, so
you have more negative messages
about one candidate than
the other, you shift votes,
not massive numbers,
but you shift enough to
decide a close election.
And what that means is that,
if you can get the number of
messages out there to be highly
negative, compared to where
they would have been, in social
media -- that's the trolls
- - and in mainstream and
conservative media - - that's
the hackers -- to shift in both
cases against Secretary Clinton,
candidate Clinton, you're
more likely to move votes
against her.
That's why I call them
discourse saboteurs.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What is so
striking to about this book,
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, is, it's
about the Russians, yes,
but it's also about the
way the American news
media covers politics.
And you talk about the tendency,
the strong tendency we have
in the last many decades
to focus more on
personalities and on process
than we do on policy.
How did that play into what
the Russians were doing?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: When
the Russian hackers illegally
stole the Democratic content and
released it into the
media stream, they were
coming into an environment
in which our reporters
are preoccupied with getting
the real story, the difference
between what the candidates
are really like and they really
plan to do, as opposed to
what they appear to be like
and they say
they're going to do.
So there was a press
narrative that was already
sitting there, and very
comfortably, and amplified
by that move to drop
the hacked content in.
And Hillary Clinton helped make
that possible by not releasing
her speech text when Bernie
Sanders asked for them.
And so once those speech texts
are released, they become fodder
for a press narrative that's
already preset.
And what it does is creates a
narrative that says, she said
one thing in public and another
thing in private.
Unfortunately, some of the
press uses of the evidence took
the actual hacked content out
of context to make the case
that that's what she had done,
when, in those instances, she
actually hadn't.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And your point
is that, if the Russians had
been doing what they have
been doing, but if the media
hasn't cooperated, this
wouldn't have happened.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:
First, if the media had
said, every time we're
going to say WikiLeaks,
instead, we will say Russian
stolen content hacked from
Democratic accounts illegally,
or Russian stolen content
given us by Julian Assange, who
wanted to see Hillary Clinton
defeated, because Hillary
Clinton wanted him prosecuted
for his use of national security
data, the source and the
message would have stayed tied.
By calling it WikiLeaks, the
press made us assume that
this was just normal content,
and was -- that it came from
a news source, a legitimate
source, not from the Russians.
Well, it's exactly
what happened.
They hacked the material,
gave it to WikiLeaks,
came into our media.
And we lost track of the fact
that it was Russian-sourced.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Senior
intelligence officials
are telling us that
the Russians are still
trying to interfere in this
election, this midterm year
election, and they expect the
same thing to happen in 2020.
If they continue, what's
the likelihood they will
be successful again?
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: The
social media platforms have made
many changes to try to minimize
the likelihood that they will
be able to replicate 2016.
They have increased the
likelihood that they're
going to catch anybody
trying to illegally
buy ads as a foreign
national, for example.
The place that we haven't seen
big changes is with the press.
We haven't heard from
our major media outlets.
If tomorrow, somebody hacked
our candidates and released the
content into the media stream,
how would you cover it?
Would you cover it the same?
And would you assume
its accuracy, instead
of questioning it and
finding additional sourcing
for it, before you release
it into the body politic?
I would like to know what the
press is going to do confronted
with the same situation again.
I do have some sense of what the
social media platforms will do.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well,
there's some serious work
to be done all around.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, you
performed a real service.
The book is "Cyberwar: How
Russian Hackers and Trolls
Helped Elect a President."
Thank you very much.
KATHLEEN HALL
JAMIESON: Thank you.