The shutdown of a Russia-backed media company raises new questions about political influencers

Tenet Media has shut down. Will the conservative media company serve as a cautionary tale during the so-called “influencer election” of 2024?

News of Tenet’s shuttering arrived two days after an unsealed federal document revealed the company’s purported ties to state-backed Russian media. A Department of Justice indictment claimed that two employees of the controversial outlet Russia Today invested $10 million in Tenet, a U.S.-based company that produces political content.

“The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement. “Our investigation into this matter remains ongoing.”

With the U.S. government hot on its heels, Tenet shut down on September 6. YouTube deleted the company’s account, and co-founder Lauren Chen‘s contract with Blaze TV has been terminated.

Neither Chen nor her husband and fellow Tenet co-founder Liam Donovan have commented on the allegations against their company, though some of the creators who worked with them have spoken up. “The FBI believes I have information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation and have requested a voluntary interview,” conservative commentator Tim Pool

wrote on X. “I will be offering my assistance in this matter.”

The spread of Russian propaganda on YouTube has led to numerous sanctions against Kremlin-backed channels. Russia Today was one of the hubs that got demonetized due to the “extraordinary circumstances” created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. More recently, Google uprooted more than 6,000 YouTube channels in an attempt to stymie “coordinated influence operations” originating in China.

With its options on YouTube limited, Russia Today turned to Tenet to get reach. The state media operation created a fictitious investor profile named Eduard Grigoriann, who coordinated with Tenet and its stable of influencers. As a result, the Russian firm was able to put its thumb on the scales of the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

Stories like this one — and the recent discovery of an influencer network spreading misinformation about Vice President Kamala Harris — raise fresh questions regarding political creators and their abilities to handle the complexities of journalistic ethics. Traditional media types scoffed when influencers took up more space than usual at the Democratic National Convention, and the Tenet Media situation helps us understand where that disdain is coming from.

Pool may call himself a “victim” in this matter, but one wonders how the commentator overlooked the Eduard Grigoriann ruse when so many details about the character set off alarm bells. Griogriann had no public presence and invoked liberal buzzwords like “social justice” in his work with Tenet’s conservative cohort. If the company’s partners were unable to suss out that scheme, can they be trusted to report the news?

Even in a post-Tenet world, the proliferation of creator-led political content will continue throughout the 2024 election cycle and beyond. President Biden has made nice with influencers, his Democratic successor Kamala Harris has harnessed the power of memes, and even Donald Trump has become a TikTok defender.

When Biden gathered creators for a White House summit in August, he reminded them that their commitment to the truth needed to be at the top of their minds. “It’s getting incredibly difficult to count the number of lies people hear,” Biden said. “They don’t know what to believe, they don’t know what to count on. But you break through in ways that I think are going to change the entire dynamic of the way in which we communicate.”

The rise of foreign influence on social media platforms underscores the importance of the President’s message. Now its creators’ turn to pay attention, and the Tenet Media situation should serve as a wake-up call.