That Ohio protest photo looked like a zombie movie. Zombie movie directors think so, too.

By Maura Judkis
April 17, 2020 at 11:18 a.m. EDT

The insatiable flesh-hunger of zombies wasn’t exactly on photographer Joshua A. Bickel’s mind when he was covering an anti-social-distancing protest at the statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, on Monday. But it was all that was on the, well, braaaaaains of people who saw Bickel’s work on social media, where the photo went viral for its parallels to classic zombie films.

The Columbus Dispatch photographer’s image is frightening and compelling. Approximately 100 protesters who were urging Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to end the state’s stay-at-home order and reopen businesses pressed up against the glass doors to the statehouse, chanting and banging windows.

One wears a Guy Fawkes mask. Two men wear Trump-branded baseball caps. Two women, the closest to the windows, shape their mouths into the same elongated howl as Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” American flags obscure some of the protesters in the back.

“I thought this was a screencap from a zombie movie,” tweeted one woman.

“Some strong ‘Shaun of the Dead’ energy in this photo from the protests in Ohio,” tweeted another man.

It looked awfully familiar to Michael Satrazemis, the director of photography for “The Walking Dead” and director of “Fear the Walking Dead,” two shows that seem a little scarier these days, since they’re about a zombie apocalypse that begins with an uncontrollable pathogen.

-snip-

Emails cast further doubt on Pompeo's claim NPR reporter lied to him

• Mike Pompeo’s claimed Mary Louise Kelly lied before interview
• Opinion: Kelly’s Pompeo interview was like satire. If only

Oliver Laughland
@oliverlaughland
Mon 27 Jan 2020 13.57 GMT
Last modified on Mon 27 Jan 2020 13.59 GMT

Newly released emails between the office of Mike Pompeo and NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly cast further doubt on the secretary of state’s extraordinary claim that the journalist lied to him before a contentious interview.

Pompeo, who reportedly subjected Kelly to an expletive-ridden rant in his private living room after an interview during which he was asked about his role in the Ukraine scandal, issued a statement in which he accused the reporter of violating “the basic rules of journalism and decency”.

Kelly maintained that her meeting with Pompeo after the recorded interview was not agreed to be off the record.

NPR has stood by its reporter and emails quoted by the Washington Post show Kelly clearly expressing that Ukraine would be discussed.

-snip-

Russian hackers who stole DNC emails failed at social media. WikiLeaks helped.

By Craig Timberg
11/12/2019, 10:19:00 p.m.

The Russian military hackers who stole tens of thousands of sensitive Democratic Party documents in 2016 struggled to disseminate their bounty online — at least until anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks joined the effort, according to a report released Tuesday night.

The report, prepared by analyzing data Facebook provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee, found that the Russian military hackers sought to publicize the documents as early as June 14 that year through a post on Facebook that said, “Check restricted documents leaked from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign staff,” and provided a link to an online trove. But despite the potentially explosive contents, the post on the “DCLeaks” page generated just 11 “likes,” 17 shares and zero comments.

Direct messages to American journalists, made through a fictitious Twitter persona called Guccifer 2.0, generated a spate of news coverage soon after. But that was modest compared to the deluge that came five weeks later, on July 22, when WikiLeaks published the documents and tweeted a link to its 3.2 million followers.

The revelations from the stolen documents, many of which were embarrassing emails showing party officials appearing to favor Clinton over her rival for the presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders, soon spread widely enough to prompt the Democratic chairwoman to resign on the eve of the party’s national convention.

The hacking campaign’s outreach efforts, executed by the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU, underscore how marrying stolen documents with sophisticated social media outreach can generate outsize results. It also underscored the unwitting role American journalists played in a Russian intelligence operation to interfere in a U.S. election.

-snip-