Type of site | News website, Blog |
---|---|
Founder(s) | Max Blumenthal |
Editor | Wyatt Reed (managing) [1] |
Key people | Ben Norton (until January 2022) Aaron Maté Anya Parampil Alex Rubenstein Kit Klarenberg |
URL | thegrayzone |
Launched | December 2015 |
The Grayzone is an American fringe, [7] far-left [19] news website and blog, [23] founded and edited by American journalist Max Blumenthal. [20] The website, initially founded as The Grayzone Project, [24] was affiliated with AlterNet before becoming independent in early 2018. [4]
It is known for its critical coverage of American foreign policy, [1] [4] misleading reporting, [25] [26] and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes. [4] [21] [27] [28] The Grayzone has downplayed or denied the Chinese government's human rights abuses against Uyghurs, [32] published conspiracy theories about Venezuela, Xinjiang, Syria, and other regions, [33] [34] and published disinformation about Ukraine during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which some have described as pro-Russian propaganda. [31]
Grayzone writers such as Blumenthal and Aaron Maté acted as briefers on behalf of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations at UN meetings organised by Russia. [35] [36] [37] [38] [39]
The Grayzone was founded as a blog called The Grayzone Project in December 2015 by Max Blumenthal. [4] [20] [24] The blog was hosted on AlterNet until early 2018, when The Grayzone became independent of the website. [4] [40]
Amid the Syrian civil war, the website supported the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, [26] published content denying that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians, [28] [41] [42] [43] and accused the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) of a "cover-up". [44] The website also downplayed the scope of China's Xinjiang internment camps and other widely reported abuses by the Chinese government against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities. [3] [4] [20] [21] [28] Blumenthal stated in July 2020 that, "I don’t have reason to doubt that there’s something going in Xinjiang, that there could even be repression. But we haven’t seen the evidence for these massive claims". [4]
Research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which studied 28 social media accounts, individuals, outlets and organisations, stated that Grayzone reporter Aaron Maté was the "most prolific spreader of disinformation" on matters concerning Syria amongst its study group, having surpassed Vanessa Beeley in 2020. [45] [46]
When a humanitarian aid convoy on the border of Venezuela caught fire in February 2019, The Grayzone published an article by Blumenthal in which he argued that the U.S. government and mainstream media had falsely reported forces supporting President Nicolás Maduro as the individuals responsible for sparking the flames, writing that "the claim was absurd on its face." Glenn Greenwald, writing in The Intercept, commented that the story "compiled substantial evidence strongly suggesting that the trucks were set ablaze by anti-Maduro protesters". [47]
The English Wikipedia formally deprecated the use of The Grayzone as a source for facts in its articles in March 2020, citing issues with the website's factual reliability. [4] [22]
The Grayzone promoted the Nicaraguan government's narrative on the 2018–2022 Nicaraguan protests and the November 2021 Nicaraguan general election. [6] [48] [24] The platform also conducted an "unquestioning interview", according to The Guardian, with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. [49] [50] Blumenthal and Norton expressed their support to the regime dancing to "El Comandante se queda" (English: The Comandante Stays) a cumbia song composed in support of Ortega during the 2018 protests. [50] The Grayzone published an open letter, promoted by RT, criticizing The Guardian 's coverage of Nicaragua and one of its contributors, Carl David Goette-Luciak. Goette-Luciak was later arrested and deported by the Nicaraguan government. John Perry, writing under the pseudonym Charles Redvers, published a "confession" on The Grayzone of student protester Valeska Sandoval. [24] The confession was false and Sandoval made it under duress while in prison. [6] [24] [48]
In February 2021, tweets concerning a Grayzone article by Blumenthal were the first to receive a Twitter warning label stating "These materials may have been obtained through hacking". The story was titled "Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat participated in covert UK Foreign Office–funded programs to 'weaken Russia', leaked docs reveal". The story referred to hacked and leaked documents and alleged that a British Army unit has used "social media to help fight wars". [51] [52]
Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the website has published disinformation, including the debunked claim that Ukrainian fighters were using civilians as human shields, and that the 2022 Mariupol theatre bombing was staged by the Azov Regiment to warrant NATO intervention. [31] The Grayzone's invitation to the 2022 Web Summit, the largest technology conference in Europe, was withdrawn over backlash against the website's anti-Ukrainian narratives amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [11] [53] [54] After the documentary Navalny won an Academy Award in February 2023, The Grayzone published an article by Lucy Komisar criticizing the film. The article was shown to be written by the neural network Writesonic and to use reference sources that did not exist. [55] [56] [57] [58]
In March 2023, The Grayzone published an article by Lucy Komisar, which was partly written by the artificial intelligence writing assistant Writesonic, and included fictional sources. The Grayzone amended the article following a controversy about the use of AI in the writing of the article, and then removed it at the request of Komisar. [59]
Blumenthal has stated that The Grayzone receives funding through Patreon and from "private friends of mine who are basically progressive Americans who support progressive media". He said The Grayzone receives no state funding from Russia or China. [60]
In August 2023, GoFundMe froze more than $90,000 from 1,100 contributors to The Grayzone, citing unspecified "external concerns". Blumenthal said he believed the concerns were political and related to the platform's coverage of the war in Ukraine. The Grayzone's managing editor Wyatt Reed had also had issues with PayPal and Venmo since reporting on Ukraine. [1]
The Grayzone's news content is generally considered to be fringe, [3] [4] [5] [6] and the website maintains a pro-Kremlin editorial line, [26] [61] centred around an opposition to the foreign policy of the United States and a desire for a multipolar world. [4]
The Grayzone has been criticized for defending authoritarian regimes. [4] [20] [34] [40] [62] In Reorienting Hong Kong’s Resistance: Leftism, Decoloniality, and Internationalism, The Grayzone was described as "known for misleading reporting in the service of authoritarian states". [25] Nerma Jelacic, writing in the Index on Censorship , described The Grayzone as "a Kremlin-connected online outlet that pushes pro-Russian conspiracy theories and genocide denial." [63] In 2019, The Grayzone had claimed the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, of which Jelacic is a director, collaborated with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra affiliates. [63]
It has also been sharply criticized for de-emphasizing the scale of the Xinjiang internment camps and other Chinese state abuses against Uyghurs. [4] [20] [64]
The Russian fake news website Peace Data has republished articles by The Grayzone in order to build a reputation as a progressive and anti-Western media source and to attract contributors. [65] False claims published by The Grayzone are referenced by many Twitter users who back Assad and the Russian government. [26]
The government of China, officials within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Chinese state media have viewed The Grayzone's coverage of China positively. [3] [4] [20] [21] The site has promoted Chinese Communist Party narratives on Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. [66] In order to dispute accusations of ongoing atrocities in Xinjiang, Chinese state media and Chinese officials have increasingly cited posts from The Grayzone in their public communications. [69] According to a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Chinese state-controlled media and affiliated entities began to amplify articles from The Grayzone in December 2019 after the website posted an article critical of Xinjiang researcher Adrian Zenz. [3] Chinese state-controlled media cited The Grayzone at least 313 times between December 2019 and February 2021, 252 of which were in English-language publications, the report said. [3] [29] [70]
The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) is a terrorist Uyghur Islamic extremist organization founded in Pakistan by Hasan Mahsum. Its stated goals are to establish an Islamic state in Xinjiang and Central Asia, and eventually a caliphate.
Xinhua News Agency, or New China News Agency, is the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China. A State Council's ministry-level institution founded in 1931, Xinhua is the largest media organ in China.
Propaganda in China refers to the use of propaganda by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or historically the Kuomintang (KMT), to sway domestic and international opinion in favor of its policies. Domestically, this includes censorship of proscribed views and an active promotion of views that favor the government. Propaganda is considered central to the operation of the CCP and the Chinese government, with propaganda operations in the country being directed by the CCP's Central Propaganda Department.
RT is a Russian state-controlled international news television network funded by the Russian government. It operates pay television and free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic.
Max Blumenthal is an American author and blogger. He was a writer for The Nation, AlterNet, The Daily Beast, Al Akhbar, Mondoweiss, and Media Matters for America, and has contributed to Al Jazeera English, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He has been a writing fellow of the Nation Institute. He is a regular contributor to Russian state-owned Sputnik and RT.
The Global Times is a daily tabloid newspaper under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, commenting on international issues from a Chinese nationalistic perspective. The publication is sometimes called "China's Fox News" for its propaganda and the monetization of nationalism.
Michael Wallace is an Irish politician and former property developer who has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Ireland for the South constituency since July 2019. He is a member of Independents 4 Change, part of The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL. He was a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Wexford constituency from 2011 to 2019.
MintPress News (MPN) is an American far-left news website founded and edited by Mnar Adley which was launched in January 2012 and also publishes the MintCast podcast. It covers political, economic, foreign affairs and environmental issues. Editorially, MintPress News supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and the governments of Russia, Iran, and Syria. It opposes the governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and reports geopolitical events from an anti-Western perspective. In one contentious article, MintPress News falsely asserted that the Ghouta chemical attack in Syria was perpetrated by rebel groups rather than by the Syrian government.
State-sponsored Internet propaganda is Internet manipulation and propaganda that is sponsored by a state.
Bellingcat is a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT). It was founded by British citizen journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 2014. Bellingcat publishes the findings of both professional and citizen journalist investigations into war zones, human rights abuses, and the criminal underworld. The site's contributors also publish guides to their techniques, as well as case studies.
Sputnik is a Russian state-owned news agency and radio broadcast service. It was established by the Russian government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya on 10 November 2014. With headquarters in Moscow, Sputnik maintains regional editorial offices in Washington, D.C., Cairo, Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro. Sputnik describes itself as being focused on global politics and economics and aims for an international audience.
The propaganda of the Russian Federation promotes views, perceptions or agendas of the government. The media include state-run outlets and online technologies, and may involve using "Soviet-style 'active measures' as an element of modern Russian 'political warfare'". Notably, contemporary Russian propaganda promotes the cult of personality of Vladimir Putin and positive views of Soviet history. Russia has established a number of organizations, such as the Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests, the Russian web brigades, and others that engage in political propaganda to promote the views of the Russian government.
China Global Television Network (CGTN) is one of three branches of state-run China Media Group and the international division of China Central Television (CCTV). Headquartered in Beijing, CGTN broadcasts news in multiple languages. CGTN is under the control of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party.
Eva Karene Bartlett is a Russian-based American Canadian activist, journalist, commentator, and blogger who has propagated conspiracy theories in connection to the Syrian civil war, most notably the disproven allegation that the White Helmets stage rescues and "recycle" children in its videos.
The Xinjiang internment camps, officially called vocational education and training centers by the government of China, are internment camps operated by the government of Xinjiang and the Chinese Communist Party Provincial Standing Committee. Human Rights Watch says that they have been used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other Muslims since 2017 as part of a "people's war on terror", a policy announced in 2014. The camps have been criticized by the governments of many countries and human rights organizations for alleged human rights abuses, including mistreatment, rape, and torture, with some of them alleging genocide. Some 40 countries around the world have called on China to respect the human rights of the Uyghur community, including countries such as Canada, Germany, Turkey, Honduras and Japan. The governments of more than 35 countries have expressed support for China's government. Xinjiang internment camps have been described as "the most extreme example of China's inhumane policies against Uighurs".
The Chinese government is committing a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang that is often characterized as persecution or as genocide. Beginning in 2014, the Chinese government, under the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, incarcerated more than an estimated one million Turkic Muslims without any legal process in internment camps. Operations from 2016 to 2021 were led by Xinjiang CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo. It is the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. The Chinese government began to wind down the camps in 2019. Amnesty International states that detainees have been increasingly transferred to the formal penal system.
Adrian Nikolaus Zenz is a German anthropologist known for his studies of the Xinjiang internment camps and persecution of Uyghurs in China. He is a director and senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an anti-communist think tank established by the US government and based in Washington, DC.
The Insider is an independent online newspaper specializing in investigative journalism, fact-checking and political analytics. It was founded in 2013 by Roman Dobrokhotov, a Russian journalist and the owner of the newspaper. The newspaper is known for exposing fake news in Russian media. The editorial office of the website is located in Riga, Latvia. Andris Jansons is the editor-in-chief of the website.
Aaron Maté is a Canadian writer and journalist. He hosts the show Pushback with Aaron Maté on The Grayzone and, as of January 2022, he fills in as a host on the Useful Idiots podcast. Maté has worked as a reporter and producer for Democracy Now!, Vice, The Real News Network, and Al Jazeera, and has contributed to The Nation.
As part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state and state-controlled media have spread disinformation in their information war against Ukraine. Ukrainian media and politicians have also been accused of using propaganda and deception, although such efforts have been compared to the Russian disinformation campaign as more limited.
The Grayzone has followed a similar path on Syria, challenging reports of atrocities by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. ...Based on a desire for a multipolar world, in which global military, cultural and economic power is distributed among multiple nation states and Western influence greatly diminished, they have been quick to argue on behalf of authoritarian regimes such as China and Syria.
The Grayzone, a publication known for misleading reporting in the service of authoritarian states...
These grassroots communities are particularly evident on Twitter, where they coalesce around individual personalities like right-wing activist Andy Ngo, and around platforms with uncritical pro-Kremlin and pro-Assad editorial lines, like The Grayzone and MintPress News. These personalities and associated outlets act as both producers of counterfactual theories, as well as hubs around which individuals with similar beliefs rally. The damage that these ecosystems and the theories that they spawn can inflict on digital evidence is not based on the quality of the dis/misinformation that they produce but rather on the quantity.
Finally, the Grayzone and MintPress News pursue another form of leftist engagement with the fake news phenomenon – condemning the mainstream media for fake news, while amplifying the propaganda of autocratic foreign governments.
The Grayzone, has consistently denied that the Assad regime used chemical weapons on its own people when, indeed, they did.
journalists have seized upon the documents released by 'Alex' as evidence that the OPCW falsified its report on Douma in order to frame the Syrian government for the attack and justify missile strikes launched by the US, UK and France against the government of Bashar al-Assad. Peter Hitchens at the Mail on Sunday, and Aaron Mate at The Grayzone have both written extensively on the matter.
In a July 7, 2017 article for his self-funded Grayzone Project, Blumenthal and his associate Benjamin Norton likewise cast doubt on the guilt of the only party known to have possessed and used sarin in the Syrian conflict.
During the elections themselves...a carnival sideshow of figures descended on the country to be feted by [the] regime... ubiquitous was the U.S. journalist Ben Norton, affiliated with the website The Grayzone, which has made something of a cottage industry of defending dictators and their crimes. A reliable government booster nonetheless forced to admit on state television that there were no lines at polling booths, Norton was lampooned by the Nicaraguan blog Bacanalnica as a "cartoon … who hangs out with the most nefarious governments on the planet."
UPDATE: Feb. 24, 2021, 9:34 a.m. EST According to Twitter, this instance is indeed the first time the "hacked materials" warning label has been used.
During a recent interview, Blumenthal denied The Grayzone receives any state funding through Russia or China saying, "Well, you can see we get a lot of support on Patreon, and anyone who supports us outside Patreon are like private friends of mine who are basically progressive Americans who support progressive media."