 | |
| Founded | April 20, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | , United States |
Key people |
|
| Total equity | US$300 million (2020) |
| Website | gtv.org |
| Footnotes /references [1] [2] | |
GTV Media Group, Inc. is a media company formed in April 2020 by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui. [3] [4] The company operates GTV, a Chinese media platform. [5]
Prior to forming GTV, Steve Bannon served as an executive of Breitbart News and an advisor to the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, is a Chinese billionaire fugitive. [6] [7] Guo paid Bannon $1 million for consulting services related to G News from August 2018 to August 2019. [8]
GTV Media Group, Inc. was founded in New York on April 20, 2020. [2] In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that GTV Media was being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related to more than $300 million in private equity funding. Some investors had requested refunds after GTV Media failed to produce official documents validating their investments. Bank accounts of the company were frozen by Wells Fargo and Chase Bank, and a Bank of America account of GTV Media's parent company was closed. [9] [1] [7]
The organization also attracted attention in August following the federal grand jury indictment of Bannon, Brian Kolfage, and several of their associates on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with the We Build the Wall fundraising project. [1] [7] [10] [6] Guo responded that the charges were "fabricated" and claimed that they were part of a plan by the Chinese Communist Party to "take Mr. Bannon down". [11]
Like other entities under Guo and Bannon, this organization has also participated in the spread of non verified information and conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden [5] [12] as well as misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. [13] [14] [15]
In September 2021, GTV settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations that it participated in the illegal sale of shares and digital securities called G-Coins or G-Dollars. In the settlement, the firms paid more than $539 million. [16]
GTV formerly hosted Counterspin Media, a far right New Zealand platform promoting far right ideology and conspiracy theories including opposition to COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions. Counterspin's hosts including founder and far right activist Kelvyn Alp and former Green Party activist Hannah Spierer. [17] [18]
New Tang Dynasty Television is a multilingual American television broadcaster founded by adherents of the Falun Gong new religious movement and based in New York City. The station was founded in 2001 as a Chinese-language broadcaster, but has since expanded its language offerings; in July 2020, it launched its 24/7 English channel which now broadcasts nationwide in the U.S. and UK. It is under the Epoch Media Group, a consortium which also includes the newspaper The Epoch Times. NTD has promoted misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Andrew James Breitbart was an American conservative journalist and political commentator who was the founder of Breitbart News and a co-founder of HuffPost.
The Epoch Times is a far-right international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement. The newspaper, based in New York City, is part of the Epoch Media Group, which also operates New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television. The Epoch Times has websites in 35 countries but is blocked in mainland China.
GTV may refer to:
Breitbart News Network is an American far-right syndicated news, opinion, and commentary website founded in mid-2007 by American conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart News's content has been described as misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist by academics and journalists. The site has published a number of conspiracy theories and intentionally misleading stories. Posts originating from the Breitbart News Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.
Kelvyn Glen Alp is a New Zealand far-right politician and activist. During the 1990s, Alp established a paramilitary organisation called the New Zealand Armed Intervention Force. During the 2020s, Alp founded a far-right media platform called Counterspin Media, which played an active role in leading the 2022 Wellington protest.
Robert Hunter Biden is an American attorney who is the second son of U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife Neilia Hunter Biden. He is also a hedge fund, venture capital, and private-equity fund investor who formerly worked as a lobbyist, banker, public administration official, and registered lobbyist-firm attorney. Biden was a founding board member of BHR Partners, a Chinese investment company. In 2020, he began exhibiting his paintings.
Stephen Kevin Bannon is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker. He served as the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump during the first seven months of Trump's term. He is a former executive chairman of Breitbart News and previously served on the board of the now-defunct data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.
The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) is a conservative think-tank located in Tallahassee, Florida. GAI was founded in 2012 by Peter Schweizer and Steve Bannon with funding from Robert Mercer and family. Schweizer serves as the group's president.
Guo Wengui, also known under the names Guo Haoyun (郭浩云), Miles Guo, and Miles Kwok, is an exiled Chinese billionaire businessman who became a political activist and controls Beijing Zenith Holdings, and other assets. At the peak of his career, he was the 73rd richest person in China. Guo was accused of corruption and other misdeeds by the Chinese authorities and fled to the United States in late 2014, after learning he was going to be arrested under allegations of bribery, kidnapping, money laundering, fraud and rape. Guo claims the charges are politically motivated and are a product of a campaign of political retribution carried out against him by the Chinese government. Guo is a colleague of Steve Bannon and a member of former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
False information, including intentional disinformation and conspiracy theories, about the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease has been spread through social media, text messaging, and mass media. False information has been propagated by celebrities, politicians, and other prominent public figures. Many countries have passed laws against "fake news", and thousands of people have been arrested for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The spread of COVID-19 misinformation by governments has also been significant.
The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In the United States, it has resulted in 102,247,392 confirmed cases with 1,111,342 all-time deaths, the most of any country, and the twentieth-highest per capita worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic ranks first on the list of disasters in the United States by death toll; it was the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020, behind heart disease and cancer. From 2019 to 2020, U.S. life expectancy dropped by 3 years for Hispanic and Latino Americans, 2.9 years for African Americans, and 1.2 years for white Americans. These effects persisted as U.S. deaths due to COVID-19 in 2021 exceeded those in 2020, and life expectancy continued to fall from 2020 to 2021.
The New Federal State of China (NFSC) is a political movement or lobby group created by Guo Wengui and Steve Bannon, with the stated aim of overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the Chinese government. Launched on June 4, 2020, in New York City, the body has been referred to by its founders as a "government in exile" of China. An NGO, the Himalaya Supervisory Organization, is dedicated to spreading the word and acting as the means of communications with "international communities". The group operates in Australia under the name Himalaya Australia, in New Zealand under Himalaya New Zealand and in the UK as Himalaya UK. It has been involved in protests against the Chinese government, has opposed the arrest of Bannon in the US, and has spread controversial claims about the origins and treatment of the COVID-19 virus in Australia.
Li-Meng Yan or Yan Limeng is a Chinese virologist, known for her publications and interviews alleging that SARS-CoV-2 was made in a Chinese government laboratory. Her publications have been widely dismissed as flawed by the scientific community.
Citizens of the American Republic (COAR) was an American 501(c)(4) non-profit organization founded by Steve Bannon in 2017.
Gettr is an alt-tech social media platform and microblogging site targeting American conservatives. It was founded by Jason Miller, a former Donald Trump aide, and was officially launched on July 4, 2021. Its user interface and feature set have been described as very similar to those of Twitter.
In October 2020, a controversy emerged involving data from a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden that was abandoned at a Delaware computer shop. Three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election, the New York Post published a story presenting emails from the laptop, alleging they showed corruption by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The story was based on information provided by Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of incumbent president and candidate Donald Trump. Forensic analysis later authenticated some of the data on the laptop, including one of two key emails used by the Post in their initial reporting.
Nandini Jammi is an American activist and brand safety consultant. She is a co-founder of the Check My Ads agency and associated non-profit Check My Ads Institute. Previously, she co-founded Sleeping Giants. She informs businesses about their advertisements that appear on conservative websites that she describes as bad faith publishers—websites that publish misinformation or conspiracy theories, or engage in advertising fraud—and pressures them to stop supporting those publishers.
My Son Hunter is a film directed by Robert Davi and starring Laurence Fox, Gina Carano and John James. The film centers on Hunter Biden, the son of US president Joe Biden. In 2021, Donald Trump accused Hunter Biden of corruption. It is, according to The Guardian's Catherine Shoard, the "debut fiction attempt" of documentarians Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. The film is being distributed by American far-right news website Breitbart News, and was released on September 7, 2022.
Counterspin Media is a New Zealand online media platform that was founded by far-right activist Kelvyn Alp in May 2021. Counterspin Media has opposed the New Zealand Government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic including vaccination. In early 2022, the group played a leading role in the 2022 Wellington protest. Newsroom journalist Marc Daalder has described Counterspin Media as "one of the largest platforms for conspiracy theories and far-right ideology in New Zealand", while Stuff journalist Charlie Mitchell has described it as New Zealand's equivalent of the US website InfoWars.