 | |
Type of site | Commentary |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Founded | 21 July 2017 |
| Headquarters | London, England, UK |
| Owner | Sir Paul Marshall |
| Editor | Freddie Sayers (Editor-in-Chief & CEO) |
| URL | unherd |
| Current status | Active |
| This article is part of a series on |
| Conservatism in the United Kingdom |
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UnHerd is a British news and opinion website founded in July 2017, which describes itself as a platform for slow journalism.
UnHerd was founded in 2017 by the billionaire hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall as its owner and publisher and conservative British political activist Tim Montgomerie as its editor. [1] [2] [3] [4] Marshall has invested over £50m in GB News; Unherd's marketing describes it as a website for "people who dare to think for themselves." [5]
The website initially existed without a paywall, as it is funded by an endowment from Marshall. [6] [7] [8] In 2017, New Statesman reported that the site intended to introduce paid services. [9] In May 2020, the site said that it intended to switch to a subscription model later that year. [7] As of October 2022 [update] , it offers readers a limited number of articles for free. [10]
Following Montgomerie's departure in September 2018, [11] journalist Sally Chatterton, who previously wrote for The Daily Telegraph and The Independent , took over as editor. [12] [8]
Freddie Sayers joined the magazine in 2019 as executive editor, having previously been editor-in-chief of YouGov and co-founder of the British news and current affairs website Politics Home . [13]
In November 2022, UnHerd opened a private members' club and restaurant in Westminster, named the Old Queen Street Cafe. Talks and debates at the club are broadcast on UnHerd's YouTube channel. [3]
UnHerd's columnists include Giles Fraser, Aris Roussinos, Kat Rosenfield, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, David Patrikarakos, Terry Eagleton, Bret Easton Ellis, Mary Gaitskill, Lionel Shriver, Matthew Crawford, Helen Thompson, Freddie deBoer, Tanya Gold, Julie Bindel and Kathleen Stock. [14]
In January 2023, former Politico and The Atlantic writer Tom McTague was hired as UnHerd's political editor. [15]
Samuel Earle, writing in The Guardian, described UnHerd in 2023 as "drifting away from explicit concern for the Conservative Party and the future of capitalism, and towards a focus on culture war topics: lockdowns, wokeness, cancel culture and the trans rights movement, as well as more general journalistic fare." [16] Earle also argued that "On issues such as the climate crisis, UnHerd invariably calls for calm and scepticism. But when it comes to trans issues, the alarm seemingly cannot be raised too often or too loudly." [16] An article in Morning Star claims that "the website is keen to knock the left and promote a variety of right-wing bugbears". [17] The Conversation described the site's editorial line as "generally right-of-centre", but "not consistently pro-Conservative [Party]". [18]
When the site was launched in July 2017, Simon Childs in Vice was critical of the underlying premise, saying: "The social media news cycle can be a jading stream of ill-informed narcissists, but it's refreshing to be reminded that at least it offers a more diverse outlook than Tim Montgomerie funded by an oligarch publishing the kind of people who are generally 'unheard' because people edge away from them at parties." [19] Jasper Jackson writing for the New Statesman was also sceptical of UnHerd's promotion of slow journalism, saying "the idea UnHerd is offering a groundbreaking solution to information overload is faintly ludicrous." [9]
In 2020, Ian Burrell, writing in the i , noted that UnHerd pieces can be 2,000 words in length, presenting "nuance and context" in science articles and pursuing an "approach to digital journalism [that] is counter to the notion that only extreme views can generate traffic"; he compared the website to Tortoise Media, another "slower-paced news experiment that defies the catch-all notion of the media." [7]
In 2021, an UnHerd piece criticising the World Health Organization (WHO) for dismissing the COVID-19 lab leak theory in its investigation was marked by Facebook with a "false information" tag; Facebook apologised after UnHerd objected. In an opinion piece about the incident, Financial Times columnist Jemima Kelly noted that three days later the White House expressed "deep concerns" about the WHO investigation. [20]
According to Samuel Earle, although UnHerd attempts to present itself as a bipartisan outlet for "heterodox" thinkers, "beneath UnHerd's claims to nonpartisanship lie Conservative-friendly foundations and a range of right-wing interests, for which the site's 'heterodox' range of writers appear to offer convenient cover.". [16]
In a February 2022 UnHerd piece, Guardian journalist Hadley Freeman wrote that her paper was allowing itself to be bullied over transgender issues. [21] [22]
In July 2022, UnHerd reported that the Ukrainian government's Center for Countering Disinformation had compiled a list of politicians and intellectuals in multiple countries who they believed were promoting Russian propaganda. [23] [24] The list included US senator Rand Paul, former US congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, military analyst Edward Luttwak, political scientist John Mearsheimer, and journalist Glenn Greenwald, as well as the former chair of the Indian National Security Advisory Board. [25] [26] The UnHerd report included responses from Luttwak, Mearsheimer, and Greenwald. [23]
The Spectator is a weekly British political and cultural news magazine. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving magazine in the world. The Spectator is politically conservative, and its principal subject areas are politics and culture. Alongside columns and features on current affairs, the magazine also contains arts pages on books, music, opera, film, and TV reviews. It had an average circulation of 107,812 as of December 2023, excluding Australia.
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Timothy Montgomerie is a British political activist, blogger, and columnist. He is best known as the co-founder of the Centre for Social Justice and as creator of the ConservativeHome website, which he edited from 2005 until 2013, when he left to join The Times.
ConservativeHome is a politically conservative news website and events company. It was first established by Tim Montgomerie in 2005 with the aim of arguing for a broad conservative spectrum, which is serious about both social justice and a fair competitive economy. A second aim of the blog is to represent grassroots Conservatives, and is independent of, but supportive of, the Conservative Party.
Michael Anthony McFaul is an American academic and diplomat who served as the United States ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul became the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor in International Studies in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University in 1995, where he is the Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also a Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. Prior to his nomination to the ambassadorial position, McFaul worked for the U.S. National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and senior director of Russian and Eurasian affairs, where he was the architect of U.S. President Barack Obama's Russian reset policy.
Douglas Murray is a British neoconservative political commentator, cultural critic, and journalist. He founded the Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007, which became part of the Henry Jackson Society, where he was associate director from 2011 to 2018.
Sir Paul Roderick Clucas Marshall is a British hedge fund manager and philanthropist. According to the Sunday Times Rich List in 2020, he had an estimated net worth of £630 million. In 2024, he topped The Sunday Times Giving List, having donated £145.1 million over 12 months to various charities.
The Daily Telegraph, known online and elsewhere as The Telegraph, is a British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as The Daily Telegraph and Courier. The Telegraph is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The paper's motto, "Was, is, and will be", was included in its emblem which was used for over a century starting in 1858.
Matthew James Goodwin is a British political scientist, political commentator and former academic recognised for his research on populism and right-wing movements.
James Forsyth is a British political aide and former political journalist. After serving as political editor of The Spectator magazine since 2009, he was Political Secretary to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, from 2022 until July 2024.
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Nicholas James Timothy is a British Conservative Party politician and former political adviser, serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for West Suffolk since 2024. He served as Joint Downing Street Chief of Staff, alongside Fiona Hill, to Prime Minister Theresa May, until after the 2017 general election.
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Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a not-for-profit organisation based in the United Kingdom which aims to mitigate the spread of disinformation on the internet. The group utilises a system of ratings of news sources and websites to determine risk of disinformation. The group's efforts also include investigations into internet advertising, and the alleged use of disinformation in relation to COVID-19 featured on various websites. The group has faced scrutiny over potential political bias.
