Type of site | Commentary |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Founded | 21 July 2017 |
| Headquarters | London , UK |
| Owner | Sir Paul Marshall |
| Editor | Sally Chatterton |
| Employees | 23 (2022) |
| URL | unherd.com |
| Current status | Active |
UnHerd is a British news and opinion website founded in July 2017, and describes itself as a platform for slow journalism.
UnHerd was founded in 2017 by Sir Paul Marshall as owner and publisher, and conservative British political activist Tim Montgomerie as editor. [1] [2]
The website initially existed without a paywall, as it is funded by an endowment from Marshall. [3] [4] [5] In 2017, New Statesman reported that the site intended to introduce paid services. [6] In May 2020, the site said that it intended to switch to a subscription model later that year. [4] As of October 2022 [update] , it offers readers a limited number of articles for free. The website lists 23 staff. [7]
Following Montgomerie's departure in September 2018, [8] journalist Sally Chatterton, who previously wrote for The Daily Telegraph and The Independent , took over as editor. [9] [5] Freddie Sayers joined the magazine in 2019 as executive editor, having previously been editor-in-chief of YouGov and founder of the British news and current affairs website Politics Home .[ citation needed ]
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. [1]
UnHerd's columnists include Giles Fraser, Justin Webb, Carl Miller, Ed West, Tanya Gold, John Gray, James Bloodworth, Matthew Goodwin, Maurice Glasman, Julie Bindel, Meghan Murphy, Michael Tracey, Douglas Murray, Paul Embery, Kathleen Stock and Ian Birrell. [10]
In January 2023, former Politico and The Atlantic writer Tom McTague was hired as UnHerd's political editor. [11]
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 Jemma Kelly noted that three days later the White House expressed "deep concerns" about the WHO investigation. [12]
In a February 2022 UnHerd piece, Guardian journalist Hadley Freeman wrote that her paper was allowing itself to be bullied over transgender issues. [13] [14]
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 whom they believed were promoting Russian propaganda. [15] [16] 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. [17] [18] The UnHerd report included responses from Luttwak, Mearsheimer, and Greenwald. [15]
 | This section needs to be updated.(August 2023) |
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." [6]
In 2020, Ian Burrell, writing in the i , noted that UnHerd pieces can run to 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." [4]
John Richard Pilger was an Australian journalist, writer, scholar and documentary filmmaker. From 1962, he was based mainly in Britain. He was also a visiting professor at Cornell University in New York.
William Scott Ritter Jr. is an American author, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector and convicted sex offender.
Komsomolskaya Pravda is a daily Russian tabloid newspaper that was founded in 1925. Its name is in reference to the official Soviet newspaper Pravda 'Truth'.
John Joseph Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.
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.
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. He was formerly the newspaper's comment editor, but resigned in March 2014. On 17 February 2016, Montgomerie resigned his membership of the Conservative Party, citing the leadership's stance on Europe, which was then supportive of EU membership. In 2019, he was briefly a special adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, advising on social justice issues.
Sir Paul Roderick Clucas Marshall is a British hedge fund manager. According to the Sunday Times Rich List in 2020, he had an estimated net worth of £630 million.
MIA Rossiya Segodnya is a media group owned and operated by the Russian government, created on the basis of RIA Novosti. The group owns and operates Sputnik, RIA Novosti, inoSMI and several other entities. The head of the organisation is Dmitry Kiselyov. Margarita Simonyan is the chief editor.
Tulsi Gabbard is an American politician, United States Army Reserve officer and political commentator, who was the U.S. representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021. Gabbard was the first Samoan-American to become a voting member of Congress and also its first Hindu member. She was a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election, before announcing in October 2022 that she had left the Democratic Party to become an independent.
Media portrayals of the Russo-Ukrainian War, including skirmishes in eastern Donbas and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution after the Euromaidan protests, the subsequent 2014 annexation of Crimea, incursions into Donbas, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, have differed widely between Ukrainian, Western and Russian media. Russian, Ukrainian, and Western media have all, to various degrees, been accused of propagandizing, and of waging an information war.
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.
The StopFake website is a project of Ukrainian media NGO Media Reforms Center. It was founded in March 2014 by Ukrainian professors and students with the stated purpose of refuting Russian propaganda and fake news. It began as a Russian- and English-language fact-checking organization, and has grown to include a TV show broadcast on 30 local channels, a weekly radio show, and a strong social media following.
During Tulsi Gabbard's tenure as a congresswoman and presidential candidate, she placed much emphasis on her foreign policy views and regarded them as inseparable from her domestic policy views. She criticizes what she terms the "neoliberal/neoconservative war machine", which pushes for US involvement in "wasteful foreign wars". She has said that the money spent on war should be redirected to serve health care, infrastructure, and other domestic priorities. Nevertheless, she describes herself as both a hawk and a dove: "When it comes to the war against terrorists, I'm a hawk", but "when it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I'm a dove".
The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft is an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy. Founded in 2019, the Quincy Institute has been described as advocating realism and restraint in foreign policy. The organization is located in Washington, D.C. and is named after former president John Quincy Adams
The Grayzone is an American fringe, far-left news website and blog, founded and edited by American journalist Max Blumenthal. The website, initially founded as The Grayzone Project, was affiliated with AlterNet before becoming independent in early 2018.
Ian Birrell is a British journalist and former speechwriter to Prime Minister David Cameron. He has been a columnist at several newspapers including the i and UnHerd. From 1998 to 2010, Birrell was deputy editor-in-chief of The Independent.
Russian disinformation campaigns have occurred in many countries. For example, disinformation campaigns led by Yevgeny Prigozhin have been reported in several African countries. Russia, however, denies that it uses disinformation to influence public opinion.
In March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials falsely claimed that public health facilities in Ukraine were "secret U.S.-funded biolabs" purportedly developing biological weapons, which was debunked as disinformation by multiple media outlets, scientific groups, and international bodies. The claim was amplified by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese state media, and was also promoted by followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory and subsequently supported by other far-right groups in the United States.
The Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) is a working body of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine established in accordance with a decision of that council dated March 11, 2021 "On the creation of the Center for Countering Disinformation", and enacted by Presidential Decree No. 106 of March 19, 2021.
Julia Davis is a Ukrainian-born American journalist and media analyst writing for The Daily Beast. She is best known for founding Russian Media Monitor, a project monitoring Russian state television, including its international outlets such as RT. She has been described as the "foremost U.S. expert on Russian government-controlled television and propaganda". She has also been described as a "Russian TV whisperer for American ears". Regarding her founding of the Russian Media Monitor, she has stated that "it felt like a very natural thing that, when the U.S. is under such an attack from that part of the world, that with the unique experiences and skills I have, and the language, that I jump in and try to do something about it." She stated that:
Until 2014, my primary focus was on filmmaking, investigative reporting about crimes, government, corruption and civil rights. However, when Putin invaded Ukraine, I was dismayed to discover the lack of reporting on that topic in the U.S., which meant that a lot of news coverage was coming through the Russian English-speaking channel, RT, right here in the United States. RT previously claimed to be an alternative media outlet that reported about fringe politics, global issues and government corruption, but everything changed after Russia annexed the Crimea. In one of her interviews, [RT's editor-in-chief Margarita] Simonyan admitted that RT was created as an instrument to be used by the Kremlin for its info-wars against the West.... She explained that it would be too late to start making weapons once the war has already started. Thus, RT was apparently crafted in advance and was masquerading as a legitimate media outlet, to be used as needed.... This became very apparent in 2014. In short order, the Kremlin's bullhorn was weaponized, spewing out blatant propaganda and outright fakes.