How Keith Raniere is attempting to hijack crime reporting — and what that could mean for true crime
A Best Evidence investigation
the true crime that's worth your time
We’re got something a little different for you today. For these Friday issues, my usual strategy is to bring up something new that we might be interested in reading/listening to/watching this weekend. Then I roll into a couple newsy items, then end with a longread recommendation to get you through the waning hours of the last workday of the week/your commute home/some downtime this weekend.
But today, we have a single-topic issue, a reported piece on what appears to be an effort by supporters of NXIVM founder Keith Raniere to cast doubt on his 2020 conviction. It’s very inside media baseball, which I know is not to everyone’s taste! But as I’ve said before, it’s local, daily reporting at broadcast, online, and print outlets today that builds the foundation for the prestige true-crime properties of tomorrow. As Best Evidence has evolved, I’ve realized that my role in my partnership with Sarah is to keep my eye on the daily — and I hope you agree that that’s a worthwhile beat. Thanks for reading; I look forward to your thoughts. — Eve Batey
We’ve all seen so-called “sponsored stories” in the feeds of our local newspaper or online news org, whether we know it or not. Text is laid out in a way that makes it appear to be an article, but with a byline that typically says “sponsor” and, in more ethical publications, other branding that distinguishes it somewhat from the journalistic content that surrounds it. But the piece is written by an advertiser and, according to marketing platforms like Active Content, “it works … because it holds useful information and feels appropriate for the context, it’s a persuasive way to tell people more about what you do.”
For many publications, it’s a significant portion of its revenue stream — for example, here’s Gannett’s deck on how they “partner with brands to uncover and produce original stories that engage audiences,” articles that are published in USA Today and the company’s countless other papers. That might elicit a shrug from you when we’re talking about a spon item on a sketchy weight loss drug or mail order brides, but what if the article is presented as an article about high-profile criminal that appears to be intended to cast doubt on a conviction?
The image above is from a spon story that ran this Wednesday on the website of the East Bay Times, a six-figure-print circulation paper with a global reach online. It’s owned by Alden Global Capital (per the Atlantic, a “secretive hedge fund [that is] gutting newsrooms,” by way of Alden’s Media News Group, which has packaged the publication into its Bay Area News Group conglomerate of papers.
All that to say that this isn’t a clueless mom-and-pop shop that thoughtlessly OKed an article intended to cast doubt on the head of NXIVM; nor did this piece run only on an internet backwater. This is a real-deal website, representing a real-deal, trusted brand of a newspaper. (On the off chance that the piece is removed, here’s a PDF screenshot of the page, as it would piss me the hell off if I wrote all this and then they deleted it!) First, let’s take a look at the content itself.
The Camila photo
Here are the Keith Raniere and NXIVM Wikipedia pages, if you’d forgotten the bones of the case most recently highlighted in HBO docuseries The Vow, which kicked its second season off just last month. TL;DR: Raniere was convicted of charges including federal sex trafficking, racketeering and possession of child pornography in June, 2019, following multiple claims of cult-style coercive control and abuse. He was sentenced to 120 years in jail, where he remains as of this writing.
His defense team has since made two bids for new trials: in March 2020, they argued that witnesses in the case (per the Daily News) “perjured themselves when they said they did not plan on suing Raniere,” as victims of the cult later filed suit “saying they were subject to increasingly sexist teachings as well as unlawful medical experiments.”
I think we discussed the second bid for a new trial, in Oct. 2020, here, but as always Substack’s search has failed me: that’s when NXIVM members Nicki Clyne (Cally from Battlestar Galactica) and Michele Hatchette accused Brooklyn prosecutors of intimidating them out of testifying on Raniere’s behalf. Both motions of the motions have been denied.
But the sponsored story for this week — the buyer for which was not named — approaches the case from a new angle.
After the trial, the Raniere defense team recruited three top digital forensic experts to analyze key photo evidence central to secure convictions for the racketeering acts of possessing child pornography and sexual exploitation of a minor. “All three experts, to their surprise and dismay, found a multitude of anomalies that evidenced that the alleged contraband photos were manufactured and planted,” the exhibit indicates.
The focus of the argument are the images of “Camila,” whose pseudonym is familiar to anyone who followed the case. Here’s Courthouse News’s report from Raniere’s sentencing:
Camila described meeting Raniere at age 13; she had just taken second place in her eighth-grade spelling bee.
Two years later, Raniere had sex with her. He was 45 at the time. Camila said he photographed her nude and later told her he knew she was “special” when they first met.
Even today, Camila says she has lasting physical and emotional scars, like battling an eating disorder ever since Raniere directed her to maintain a weight of 100 pounds or less. Camila is 5 feet 5 inches tall.
When Camila asked Raniere about seeking medical help after experiencing “frightening physical symptoms,” he told her to “lose the weight first,” she testified.
“It felt like I would never be free,” Camila said. “There was no way out.”
According to the sponsored story in the East Bay Times:
Keith Raniere is seeking to get his conviction vacated on grounds the FBI allegedly tampered with photos on a hard drive and camera card, including photos of a nude woman known as ‘Camila’ at trial, to make it seem as if she was underage – key evidence against him – and gave false testimony in his 2019 trial.
To support this claim, the spon says that:
A team of six highly regarded forensic experts including Dr. J. Richard Kiper, who was a former FBI Special Agent, Computer Forensic Examiner, and Instructor, discovered that certain key evidence used to convict the former NXIVM leader had been “significantly manipulated” and even “planted” — and that the “analysis demonstrates that some of these alterations definitely took place while the devices were in the custody of the FBI.”
That’s basically the crux of it. You can read the whole thing if you want, but that’s pretty much the long and short of the allegation, that the FBI’s framed Raniere by faking the Camila photo’s timestamp, and that she lied on the stand.
There are two attorneys quoted in the spon, so clearly, this wasn’t a piece that was prepared without their involvement. That’s how we get to Joseph Tully and Alan Dershowitz.
Seriously, Dershowitz?
When you google Dershowitz and Keith Raniere, you get a lot of stuff you feel worried about clicking. Less worrisome is this Albany Times Union report from August 2020 (so, after Raniere’s conviction but before his sentencing) which quotes prosecutors as saying that a jailed Raniere told supporter Suneel Chakravorty that “what we have to do also is get scrutiny on this judge, get some pundit who is willing to speak out about what this judge is saying, which is crazy, and the judge needs to know he’s being watched.”
“So now we gotta figure out the next step with Dershowitz,” Raniere said, referring to attorney Alan Dershowitz, who has represented high-profile defendants, including notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and spoke in President Donald Trump's defense during his impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. There have been no public indications that Dershowitz has become involved in Raniere's case.
Fast forward to August of this year. That’s when UK tabloid The Sun ran a report quoting “former FBI forensic computer examiner Dr. Richard Kiper, who was hired by NXIVM's supporters to investigate the prosecution's evidence,” on the same claims of FBI manipulation that appeared in the EBT spon this week. Then, a few weeks later, the Daily Mail ran an “exclusive” on the allegations.
No mention of Dershowitz, though, nor were these new arguments reblogged or picked up in any meaningful way, from what I can tell — even Raniere lawyer Joseph Tully’s twitter, which has helpfully shared all the headlines from the case, suggests that these FBI corruption allegations from the defense team’s paid expert made barely a ripple.
A month later, on Oct 6., we first see Dershowitz’s name officially associated with the case, with a smattering of coverage of a Zoomed press conference (that’s it, embedded a few paragraphs up) on the claims of federal digital manipulation. This time, we did see some ripples: a piece on odious hate outlet The Daily Wire, another on Dan Abrams-owned publication Law & Crime, and a republished press release with the PR contact name Adriane T. Schwartz. Based on an online search, this is the only press release she’s ever been part of. But that was about it.
The road from press release to spon
Everything up until now is fairly standard stuff, hallmarks of the type of vigorous defense everyone — guilty or not — deserves. “Leaking” some sort of “exclusive” revelation to a publication is good crisis comms, and is done all the time. (I reached out to a couple crisis communication/PR folks I know as I wrote this. One refused to respond at all, another said “I’m not giving away our secrets, Eve,” and a third said they “place too much [in the media] to throw any stones.’”)
But reaching out to media as Raniere advocates have is the kind of fight I’d want my attorneys to mount for me, and the kind of fight I’d want for you (yes, even if we did it). But, also, even the meager news outlet pickup has been pretty straightforward: say what you will about the Daily Wire, and there’s a lot of shit to say, but even that outlet’s coverage was balanced with the evidence presented against Raniere, and was more than just a recap of the defense’s press release.
Since we don’t know who bought the sponsored story that ran on the East Bay Times, we can’t ask the buyer directly how they made the decision to take things to the spon streets. So I guess I have to ask other folks who know about these things.
“It fools lots of people no matter how clearly labeled”
My longtime friend Violet Blue is an expert on online reputation management, disinformation, security, and how tech is used to manipulate the masses, among many other topics. She’s a well-sourced journalist and the author of books like The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy. To her, the sponsored story about the Raniere case is just the tip of the iceberg. “The Raniere story is a perfect example of how sponsored content is used as a reputational influence operation, and it's easy to see how well these advertorials are used by nation state actors or political adversaries.” The spon is “straight propaganda intending to influence opinion about a criminal case in a content space conventional wisdom states is for ads.”
To Blue, the fact that it’s labeled as sponsored isn’t enough. “Putting ‘sponsor’ or ‘sponsored’ in the byline or header, no matter how prominently, doesn't ensure everyone knows it's not journalistic content -- not by a mile. That's for two reasons. One is that -- and we know this from years of watching Facebook influence operations sway elections -- even readers we expect to have media literacy (who are in the minority online) are regularly fooled by viral propaganda that is packaged as legitimate content.”
She’s not wrong there, as any journalist who’s worked at a publication that runs sponsored articles can tell you. In my day job, we regularly receive emails from clearly intelligent readers who believe that the advertorial our revenue team runs is journalistic content, though it’s labeled just as clearly as the EBT’s is.
“The second reason,” Blue said, “is that tech itself prevents identifying advertorials: sponsored content in its RSS feeds only show up with a headline (and maybe a subhead) in apps. News orgs can label in byline or header, but they don't control how sponsored content is presented by apps, social media sites, and other content middlemen.” That was certainly the case for me — I saw the EBT piece as I spun through RSS reader Feedly, and clicked through because the headline seemed so odd. Only then did I realize I was reading an ad.
I reached out to Michael Turpin, the EVP and CRO for Advertising and Adv Mgmt/Admin at the Bay Area News Group, about his publication’s acceptance of the Raniere spon. “The labeling above, below and around the content explains it clearly,” was his only response to my multi-question email. He politely declined to answer follow-up questions on the record.
Blue suggests, however, that spon buyers know the labeling isn’t as clear as Turpin says it is, and that they rely on the confusion the manufactured “article” creates to make it worth their while.
“The post's creator knows that no matter how it's identified to readers, many (if not most) will [only] see the headline [at] first glance and assume that something about the brand, topic, opinion, or influence op is authentic, otherwise it wouldn't be on a news site.”
A lawyer’s perspective
A defense attorney I spoke with under the condition of anonymity said first that a spon campaign like this one seemed like “a reasonable strategy if you’re headed in front of a jury.” His reasoning echoed a lot of the points raised by Blue.
“People don’t remember where they heard things, just that they heard it. They see this story on their local paper, it feels real to them. They could even see it on Facebook, doesn’t Facebook tell you where the link is from?” Yeah, it would show on the Facebook post or share what the link source is. I think that’s one of the ways it says it helps people tell legitimate news from bullshit, by making the source clear, right?
“Does the Facebook post say ‘sponsor,’ though?” No, it would just look like any other article until you click through. “Ha, yeah, even better. So then juror number one thinks ‘hey, I heard this case was a frame job on the East Bay Times,’ he’s not thinking about what Facebook tells you and what it doesn’t. And you got him on your side.”
Blue agrees, saying “sponsored posts were supposed to be for ads. In reality, they're used as influence operations: whether it's done by a brand, a company, a PR firm, or political operative. They do it because it fools lots of people no matter how clearly labeled, and they get top-tier media placement without having to merit it or tell the truth.”
My attorney friend’s theory only makes sense if they’re anticipating a new trial in a region where someone might be reading the EBT, though — and Raniere’s case is being adjudicated in Brooklyn, where other than my esteemed colleague Sarah D. Bunting, I don’t know that too many other residents read the EBT on the daily.
“And they’re not going for a change of venue to, like Oakland?” our defense friend asked. Good question, I suppose, as Tully is indeed a criminal attorney who practices in California. That might be something to watch. Otherwise, though, even the civil case filed by former NXIVM members is Brooklyn-based. So that’s not it.
Vet your news carefully, friends
The way crisis comms folks steered away from my questions and my lawyer friend embraced the idea suggests that the Raniere defense team’s sponsored content strategy might become more common as the media business continues its current cycle of consolidation, implosion, and fragmentation. Ultimately, it seems like one of the last barriers we have against misinformation propagated by trusted sources might not just be reporters trusted with vetting sources and information — it might be those publications’ ad teams. And according to Blue, now is the time that folks like BANG EVP Turpin need to look into their hearts.
“To me, [the Raniere article is] crazy-unethical for sponsored content and shouldn't be on a news website -- it looks like a news item and should be a press release at most,” she says. “Sponsored content like that is a problem that should be taken very seriously as we head into the next election cycle -- and locally focused outlets need to take a good, harsh assessment at how their reputations, traffic, and influence have been abused by bad actors to sway recent local elections, or put lives of political targets (including marginalized populations) at risk.”
Thanks for joining me on today’s less typical issue, friends. I’d really like to do more issues like this one in the future, but original reporting takes time and resources we don’t always have here. If you liked today’s issue, I hope you’ll consider a paid subscription to Best Evidence, so we can broaden our coverage in 2023. — EB
Next week on Best Evidence: Spector, Holmes, and your long-weekend catch-up plans.
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