A website written and published by an old friend of mine with Hawaii roots is among more than 200 sites said to have “wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda” as part of a larger Russian attempt to use “fake news” and social media to aid the presidential bid of Donald Trump.

The Washington Post focused on the issue of fake news in it’s much-cited story published last month (“Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say“).

The Post’s story was based on two pieces of public research. First, an article by Andrew Weisburd, Clint Watts, and JM Berger, “Trolling for Trump: How Russia is trying to destroy our democracy,” and a separate report by what the Post called “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds,” titled “Black Friday Report: On Russian Propaganda Network Mapping.”

Based on the methodology described in the article about propaganda network mapping, the latter group also issued a list of websites and blogs which, they allege, “reliably echo Russian propaganda.”

There are sources here representing a variety of political perspectives, and includes antiwar.com, consortiumnews.com, drudgereport.com, truthdig.com, and many others.

Also on the list is oftwominds.com, a website published by Charles Smith, who was known as Charles “Chuck” Bollingmo when he attended Lanai High School in the Class of 1970. His blog by the same name is widely read for its financial and social analysis.

Smith has strongly denied any ties to the Russian propaganda effort, and dismisses the Post’s reporting, and the underlying research, as just more fake news.

The authors of the list and report explain:

We have used a combination of manual and automated analysis, including analysis of content, timing, technical indicators, and other reporting, in order to initially identify (“red-flag”) the following as Russian propaganda outlets. We then confirmed our initial assessment by applying whatever criteria we did not originally employ during the red-flag process, and we reevaluate our findings as needed.

They assert that the sites on the list “frequently display a consistent bias towards Russia in ways that echo, repeat, are used by, and redirect their audiences to Russian official and semi-official state media.”

Of course, the Washington Post’s perspective has apparently been supported by a still secret CIA analysis, and there’s no shortage of other reporters piecing together some of the same information.

I’ve been following Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald on Twitter), and I’ve been surprised by some excellent reporting by Esquire, such as “How Russia Pulled Off the Biggest Election Hack in U.S. History,” and “Russia’s Interference in This Election Should Not Be a Surprise.” And concern about the impact of fake news isn’t limited to the U.S. (see the Guardian’s report, “Fake news: an insidious trend that’s fast becoming a global problem“).

The Intercept put the debate in context and called on President Obama to declassify the evidence behind allegations of Russian hacking (“Obama must declassify evidence of Russian hacking“).

Strange, exciting times we are living through.