Did a rightwing US media startup unwittingly fall under Russian influence? A new podcast investigates

. UK edition

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In the new series Influenced, investigative journalist Nicky Woolf looks into the rise and fall of Tenet Media. The story, he says, reveals how hidden forces are stoking the culture wars with divisive online content

In late 2023, a year before the US presidential election, a new US-based media startup announced itself online. Founded by Canadian rightwing commentator Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan, Tenet Media promised followers it would be “uncensored, unapologetic and unafraid” – and an antidote to the mainstream media. To do that, it signed up six hugely popular conservative influencers to make video content, luring them with hefty pay cheques.

Topics covered ranged from the ridiculous (Protesters are all ugly) to the more sinister (The right to vote: Should it be limited?), but most had a common purpose: to get viewers frothing at the mouth. The content was piped out at a rapid rate – 560 full-length videos and approximately 1,400 short-form clips in less than a year. But Tenet Media’s downfall would come almost as swiftly as its rise.

In September 2024, the US Department of Justice released the findings of an FBI investigation alleging that Russian state broadcaster RT paid a Tennessee-based media company $10m (£7.4m) to “create and distribute content to US audiences with hidden Russian government messaging”. The indictment didn’t name the company involved, but the details were specific enough for people to deduce that it was Tenet Media. YouTube swiftly deleted the company’s channel.

Culture war content
All six influencers employed by Tenet Media deny any knowledge of Russian funding or influence – and there is nothing in the indictment that suggests otherwise. The DoJ indicted two Russian citizens, employees of RT, alleging they used fake personas and shell companies to finance the organisation. “Putin is a scumbag,” Tim Pool – a Tenet Media influencer who, according to the DOJ indictment, was reportedly paid $100,000 per video – said on social media after the news broke. Chen eventually released a statement saying: “We never forced or advised our creators to push certain agendas, nor were we ever told to do so by any third party.” Since Donald Trump’s election in November 2024, nothing further has come of the indictment.

But the issue of information warfare isn’t going away. In May this year, former Trump ally and Maga influencer turned whistleblower Ashley St Clair alleged that many rightwing influencers are paid to amplify political talking points.

Now, the Tenet Media story, and how some of rightwing media’s biggest names allegedly came to be unwitting mouthpieces for Russia, is the focus of a fascinating new Audible podcast, Influenced.

The six-part series is presented by investigative journalist Nicky Woolf, who has spent much of his career covering the internet, particularly the information bubbles we all find ourselves in. “This story seemed like such a pure example of how that information ecosystem can be hacked,” he says. “What I didn’t realise when I first started looking at it is quite how much bigger it was.”

Reality bubbles
The DoJ’s indictment was not the first time Russia had been accused of meddling in US democracy, but outsourcing propaganda to content creators was a new tactic. Yet few of the videos distributed by Tenet Media were about Russia at all. So what was the aim?

“The content that Tenet Media was putting out was pretty basic culture war stuff, but that’s the point,” says Woolf. “Every expert we spoke to on Russia and information manipulation said that Russia’s aim is discord. They want people to be angry with each other. They want people to be split. They want to stick a little wedge into any cracks that appear in the social fabric. It doesn’t really matter to them what exactly is being said. It just matters that people are upset, that hatred rises.”

Conservative commentators tended to already sow discord – Russia just wanted them to do even more of it.

“Any kind of algorithmically driven social media is a perfect opportunity to keep people within a certain bubble and give them more of what you want them to see,” says Woolf. “The power of a big audience is massive, and it’s never been easier to build one.”

Most of those involved in Tenet Media declined to chat to Woolf, with one exception. Canadian conservative influencer Lauren Southern first went viral in 2015 with a video called Why I Am Not a Feminist, joining a burgeoning ecosystem of rightwing female social media stars.

Information wars
“Lauren Southern got famous practically overnight,” says Woolf. And fame is a potent drug. “The more extreme content that gets put out, and the more you get rewarded for that, the more you become enslaved to this audience that you built.”

Southern’s journey is an integral part of the podcast, and one that might surprise listeners, as it did Woolf. “She has really wrestled with the issues that we bring up in the show. The fact that her story came to a point where she was able to understand it and pull back from it, despite having been one of the most famous people within that kind of ecosystem, that’s hopeful. If she can do it, anyone can.”

The more Woolf reported on Tenet Media, the more he realised the narrative was about much more than one company, or Russia, but about an entirely “discombobulated” media system in which we all live in different realities.

“I went into this story expecting to investigate a Russian psyop,” says Woolf. “The more research that we did, the more it seemed like Tenet was the tip of the iceberg. It became about this whole world of content that we have built for ourselves. We’re all being influenced all the time.”

Listeners will go on that journey with Woolf, as each episode peels back more layers of the story. Besides the freedom to dive so deeply into a subject, Woolf loves the podcast form for its intimacy. “You are often speaking directly into people’s ears, you’re really inside their heads: when they’re on a long drive alone, or going to sleep. It’s one of my favourite forms of storytelling. You can tell a story in a much more textured way, you can bring people inside it.”

Primarily, he hopes listeners find the series compelling. “But if there is a lesson to take, it’s being aware of how manipulable everything we see online is. Whenever you see something, it’s worth thinking about why it’s there and who wants you to see it.”

Listen to Influenced and more investigative podcasts at audible.co.uk