Been happening forever, PR departments plant news stories all the time. They just need a few willing reporters/writers to get something published to start the ball rolling.

I thought I remembered it being called "submarining" but that seems to be something else. I also thought I remembered Joel Spolsky writing about it but can't find it now.

"Journalism" hasn't worked for decades. It's all nepo-baby emo diaries, subsidy milking and clickbait farming these days.

This wasn't in newspapers, this was only in marginal publications that take anything, such as Daily Kos, Middle East Monitor, and apparently the "Port St. Joe Star, a tiny Florida weekly newspaper."

Other than those, it was literally Medium and social media.

What you can do is write a polished opinion piece and tell one of your assets, or pay some politician, to publish it as an OpEd in outlets like the WaPo and NYT. Or you can get nobodies who know nothing to publish similar articles to each other in Wired, the International Business Times, and Forbes (either by "leaking" to them or because they're on your payroll), then get politicians to mention those articles in Congress and to write furious letters to WaPo and NYT accusing them of covering this story up - and then they'll write your propaganda themselves.

It's quite old now, but check out the book "Trust me, I'm lying" by Ryan Holiday. Talks about how he did this as part of a marketing strategy when he was working at (IIRC) American Apparel, among other places. And how easy/often it happens in politics. Keep in mind the book is almost 15 years old, and talking about things that even at that point were what he'd done in a previous life/career.

Yeah, and it’s not just obscure outlets, you can do this for big magazines people here read for the right price