Manipulating the Media

October 27, 2026. On Sunday, a student-led democratic movement ousted Serbia's Aleksandar Vucic, a key ally of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, from power. Today, Serbian TV started its news program by apologizing to viewers. For years, we failed to fulfill our duty. We kept silent, turned a blind eye, reported events one-sidedly, and failed to ask necessary questions. We owe our viewers an apology. Also on Sunday, right-wing presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro lost to leftist incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. Despite what appears to have been the restriction by Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, of social media accounts that promoted Lula, and its promotion of pro-Bolsonaro accounts, Lula pulled out a victory. Thiago Rogero and Tom Phillips of The Guardian reported that Lula's victory came, in large part, from street protesters who helped different factions come together against Bolsonaro, and from Lula's supporters' use of social media to override Meta's restrictions, and make pro-Lula content perform well on social media. Lula ally Andres Janonez created a WhatsApp channel called Lula's Army that organized more than 10 million followers to push back against Bolsonaro content and boost Lula. Three weeks ago, many observers thought Bolsonaro would win the election. Bolsonaro and his supporters had cultivated the idea they were allied with Trump in fighting off a perceived conspiracy. A victory for Bolsonaro would help to spread the idea of Trump's control over the Western Hemisphere, as he helped to install right-wing leaders across Latin America. But in the end, the vote was not close. Lula's supporters organized voters, explained what social media was suppressing, and helped folks get to the polls. And Lula won by more than 4 million votes. Initially, Bolsonaro said that he would not accept defeat and would ask for the result of the election to be annulled. In that refusal to accept the results of an election, Bolsonaro echoed his father, right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, who in 2023 launched a coup to remain in power after voters elected Lula. The elder Bolsonaro is currently serving a 26-year sentence for his role in that coup attempt. As Megan Messerly, Daniel DeRocher, Ari Hawkins, and Falim Kain of Politico reported, the younger Bolsonaro had the support of MAGA insiders in the U.S., who claimed the Brazilian election had been stolen. On Sunday, Trump himself told reporters that Brazil's election looked so, so corrupt, so terrible. But on Monday, Trump suggested, he would not intervene in the election. And as Michael Birnbaum, Marina Dias, and Terence McCoy of the Washington Post reported, minutes later, Bolsonaro effectively conceded. A Bolsonaro advisor told the reporters, Flavio has given up. He's terrified. He's worried his father will die in jail, that he himself will be jailed this week, and that he may have a long prison term ahead. Brazilian authorities ordered Flavio Bolsonaro, who is under investigation for corruption, money laundering, and currency evasion, to surrender his passport and stay in the country. Bolsonaro posted a video saying he would comply and that he had never thought of leaving Brazil. But today he went missing. Brazil's federal police canceled his passports and began to look for him. Bolsonaro and his family turned up this afternoon in the United States, where a senior State Department official told reporters the State Department's decision to leave Brazil was not appropriate. The State Department would offer the family visas to enter the country. Bolsonaro's allies cheered that he would lead Brazil's right-wing opposition to Lula from the United States. Meanwhile, concerns are circulating about a manipulation of information in the U.S. before the midterm election, similar to what happened in Brazil. As Kevin Fry of MSNOW reported today, Democratic Representatives Robert Garcia of California and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, are demanding that Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg explain why the main Instagram account of No Kings was suspended earlier this month during the October 17th No Kings rallies around the country that were encouraging Americans to vote. The representatives wrote that the apparent act of corporate censorship of political speech raises serious concerns about Meta's dedication to ensuring free and fair elections. The representatives dismissed Meta's explanation that the outage was caused by an automated action triggered when accounts post, share, or comment at very high frequencies. Garcia and Raskin wrote that such an explanation strained public credulity and noted that Meta appeared to have interfered in Brazil's election. Technical glitches occur, the congressman wrote, but at Meta they are happening frequently and, curiously, seem to disproportionately impact the political opponents of President Trump and his authoritarian political alliances. Garcia and Raskin noted that the interests of Zuckerberg and Meta in government contracts mean they have a financial incentive to cooperate with Trump. In addition to the suppression of information, disinformation is also a concern. As George Chidi of The Guardian reported today, disinformation, driven by AI, is running rampant on social media in the U.S. in the run-up to the midterm election. Social media companies reduced their efforts to stop the flood of disinformation in the wake of Trump's re-election, Chidi writes, and now official government sources like the Department of Homeland Security sometimes amplify the lies. Trump and his allies have always relied on a false narrative to gain and then to keep power. They adopted a strategy developed by Russian political theorists to overturn democracy by using modern media to create a false political world. Voters begin to base their political decisions on that fake image rather than on reality and are manipulated into giving up control of their government to an authoritarian. Political strategists who were key to the rise of Russian President Vladimir Putin after the collapse of the Soviet Union called this manipulation political technology. They perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing. The Democrats don't matter, Trump ally Steve Bannon told a reporter in 2018. The real opposition is the media and the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with s**t. Keeping listeners constantly trying to distinguish what is real from what is not destroys their ability to make sense of the world. Many people turn to a strong man who promises to create order. Others will get so exhausted they simply give up. Trump's allegiance to Putin continues to be on display. Today, journalists reported the administration is considering lifting sanctions on Russia's multi-billion dollar government investment fund. investment fund. Anton Trayanovsky of the New York Times explained that the Biden administration placed sanctions on the fund immediately after Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, cutting it off from the West's financial system. Lifting those sanctions would be an economic boon to Russia in the midst of its war on Ukraine. Peter Andringa, Chris Campbell, and Ine Poravdorj of the Financial Times reported today that Donald Trump Jr. took a hunting trip in Mongolia this August with Umar Kremlev, the man who helped to finance Don Jr.'s wedding party in May. Kremlev is a boxing promoter with a criminal record of extortion and battery and is close to Putin. The journalist called the relationship between Trump and Kremlin remarkable. On the trip, Don Jr. shot and killed an endangered sheep prized for its large horns. According to the Financial Times, this was at least the third Altai Argali he has killed. Tonight, Angie Nixon, the Democratic state representative who is running for the U.S. Senate from Florida, wrote in a social media post addressed to Meta, that her campaign's Instagram page was suddenly taken down while we were actively posting content from a get-out-the-vote rally in Osceola County, home to a large Puerto Rican community. This page is a critical communication tool for reaching Latino voters and mobilizing our community, she wrote. With just seven days until Election Day, every minute matters. She continued, the stakes are too high to take down pages encouraging people to vote in seven days, Meta and Instagram.