You're being silly. To take an extreme scenario, if the KGB is financing entities spouting non-sense in various publications, you expect the US/CIA to just take it lying down? :-)

It's part of intelligence/counter-intelligence, you have to control the narrative because the average citizen isn't well informed enough and will just end up believing what the other party tells them... because they're the only ones saying anything.

Private individuals can do this, but governments have been doing this too, since the beginning of time (and of governments).