The Grayzone
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![]() The homepage of The Grayzone on September 11, 2021 | |
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 was initially founded as The Grayzone Project[24] and was affiliated with AlterNet before becoming independent in early 2018.[4]
Coverage of The Grayzone has focused on its misleading[25][26] and false reporting,[27] its criticism of American foreign policy,[1][4] and its sympathetic coverage of the Russian, Chinese and Syrian governments.[4][21][28][29] The Grayzone has downplayed or denied the persecution of Uyghurs in China,[33] and been accused of publishing conspiracy theories about Xinjiang, Syria and other regions,[34][35][36] and publishing disinformation about Ukraine during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which some have described as pro-Russian propaganda.[32][36]
Grayzone staff Blumenthal and Aaron Maté acted as briefers on behalf of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations at UN meetings organized by Russia.[37][38][39][40][41] Managing editor Wyatt Reed, contributor Mohamed Elmaazi and regular freelancer Jeremy Loffredo worked for Russian state media before contributing to website.[42]
History
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][43]
An August 2018 Grayzone report revealed the identity of the owner of Canary Mission, a website reportedly dedicated to demonising pro-Palestinian students. Hamzah Raza, co-author of the report and a victim of Canary Mission himself, told Middle East Eye he hoped his research can stop the "defamation and harassment" of students "by taking away the anonymity that Canary Mission hides behind".[44][45]
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 stated that the U.S. government and mainstream media had falsely reported forces supporting President Nicolás Maduro were responsible for sparking the flames, writing that "the claim was absurd on its face." Glenn Greenwald, writing in The Intercept, commented that Blumenthal "compiled substantial evidence strongly suggesting that the trucks were set ablaze by anti-Maduro protesters".[46]
Amid the Syrian civil war, the website supported the government of Bashar al-Assad.[26] Articles by Grayzone reporter Aaron Maté echoed claims by the Russian and Syrian governments that documents leaked to Wikileaks showed that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had "doctored" its report on the Douma chemical attack "to frame the Syrian government and justify the missile strikes launched by the US, UK and France against forces loyal to the government,"[47] denying that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against civilians,[29][48][47][49] and accusing the OPCW of a "cover-up".[50]
Research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which studied 28 social media accounts, individuals, outlets and organisations, stated that Maté was the "most prolific spreader of disinformation" on matters concerning Syria amongst its study group, having surpassed Vanessa Beeley in 2020.[51][52] Research published in 2020 in the Harvard Kennedy School's Misinformation Review found Blumenthal in the top 20 amplified accounts and Grayzone in the top 20 linked domains in a Twitter information ecosystem promoting pro-government narratives about Syria's White Helmets.[53]
The site has promoted CCP narratives on Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan.[54] In particular, it downplayed the widely reported scope of China's Xinjiang internment camps and other abuses by the Chinese government against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities.[3][4][20][21][29] Blumenthal has said that reports of the persecution of Ugyhurs in China use “the hostile language of a Cold War, weaponizing a minority group.” He 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]
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][55][24] The platform also conducted an "unquestioning interview", according to The Guardian, with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.[56][57] 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.[57] 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][55]
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".[58][59]
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.[32][60] 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][61][62]
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 written by the neural network Writesonic and referenced sources that did not exist.[63][64][65][66] 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.[67]
An analysis in The Grayzone of a UN report corroborating Hamas rape allegations during the Israel–Hamas war, claimed the report had put forward "no evidence of systematic rape". The Grayzone also published a transcribed discussion between Max Blumenthal and Chris Hedges in which they agreed that Israel launched a "shock-and-awe campaign of misinformation" to create "political space for its brutal assault on Gaza".[68]
Funding
In 2022, Blumenthal 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.[48]
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]
In June 2024, The Washington Post reported that hacked documents revealed that Reed received payments of around $5,500 from Iranian state-controlled broadcaster Press TV for "occasional contributions to its programming in 2020 and 2021".[69][70]
Staff
Several staff, former staff, and freelance writers have previously been employed by Russian government funded media outlets RT and Sputnik, among them Anya Parampil, Alex Rubinstein, Kit Klarenberg, Wyatt Reed, Mohamed Elmaazi and Jeremy Loffredo.[42][64][71][2] Parampil had previously worked as an anchor and correspondent for RT America.[36] Reed, who was credited as a managing editor as of 2023, made occasional contributions to Iranian state-run Press TV in 2020 and 2021.[72]
Reception
According to Norwegian-American writer Bruce Bawer in September 2019, The Grayzone has taken a pro-Hamas line on the Israel-Palestine conflict:[73]
Basically, however, Grayzone (thegrayzone.com) is a one-stop propaganda shop, devoted largely to pushing a pro-Assad line on Syria, a pro-regime line on Venezuela, a pro-Putin line on Russia, and a pro-Hamas line on Israel and Palestine.
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][74] centred around an opposition to the foreign policy of the United States and a desire for a multipolar world.[4] The site has been criticized for defending Russia and other authoritarian regimes.[4][20][35][43][75] 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."[76] 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.[76]
It has also been criticized for de-emphasizing the scale of the Xinjiang internment camps and other Chinese state abuses against Uyghurs.[4][20][77]
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.[78] 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] In order to dispute accusations of ongoing atrocities in Xinjiang, Chinese media and officials have increasingly cited posts from The Grayzone in their public communications.[83] According to a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Chinese media and affiliated entities began to amplify articles from The Grayzone in December 2019 after the site posted an article critical of Xinjiang researcher Adrian Zenz.[3] Chinese 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][30][84] Similarly, according to the Brookings Institute in 2023, Grayzone contributors such as Aaron Mate ("influencers...affiliated with alternative, Western, English-language outlets, including Grayzone and MintPress news — frequently cited by Kremlin media on a wide variety of topics targeting different regions") are among the most-promoted social media accounts boosted by Russian information networks in Latin America to promote Russia's narrative on its war with Ukraine.[85]
According to a November 2023 opinion article by biology researcher Michal Perach in Haaretz, Max Blumenthal wrote a Grayzone article that denied evidence of Hamas' war crimes in the 7 October attacks and manipulated quotes from Israeli sources to paint Israel (instead of Hamas) as being responsible for most of the victims.[86]
See also
- MintPress News – American far-left news website
References
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- ^ a b c d e f g h Zhang, Albert; Wallis, Jacob; and Meers, Zoe. (March 2021) Strange bedfellows on Xinjiang: The CCP, fringe media and US social media platforms. Archived September 12, 2021, at the Wayback Machine Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Thompson, Caitlin (July 30, 2020). "Enter the Grayzone: fringe leftists deny the scale of China's Uyghur oppression". Coda Story. Archived from the original on October 19, 2021. Retrieved September 12, 2021.
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.
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- ^ "fringe website":[2][3][4][5][6]
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- ^ "and blog":[12][20][21][22]
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The Grayzone, a publication known for misleading reporting in the service of authoritarian states...
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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.
- ^ Freedman, Lawrence (May 4, 2023). "False flag attacks are usually just that – false". New Statesman. Retrieved June 17, 2024.
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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.
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- ^ "Denied human rights abuses against Uyghurs":[4][17][20][29][30][3][31][32]
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- ^ "Briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Moscow, July 6, 2023". mid.ru. Archived from the original on September 2, 2023. Retrieved July 8, 2023.
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- ^ Foresta, Mathew (January 1, 2024). "How the Grayzone went from left-wing darling to right-wing influencer". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on January 13, 2024. Retrieved January 13, 2024.
And its turn to the far-right, with its founder embracing and appearing with politicians and influencers in the movement, is exemplary of a burgeoning movement of leftists turning to the right.
- ^ a b Menn, Joseph (June 2, 2024). "News site editor's ties to Iran, Russia show misinformation's complexity". Washington Post. Archived from the original on June 3, 2024. Retrieved June 3, 2024.
Reed is not the only Grayzone author to have worked for Russian outlets. Grayzone contributor and London journalist Mohamed Elmaazi wrote full-time for Sputnik between 2019 and 2021, he says on his LinkedIn profile. Regular Grayzone freelancer Jeremy Loffredo was full-time at RT in the same years, according to his LinkedIn. Neither responded to requests for comment.
- ^ a b Bawer, Bruce (September 2019). "Useful Idiot: The Curious Case of Max Blumenthal". Commentary. Archived from the original on March 9, 2022.
- ^ Ali Harb (August 29, 2018). "Canary Mission: Mystery website demonising pro-Palestine students exposed". Middle East Eye.
- ^ "In Case You Missed It: A Summer Full of Censorship for Palestine Supporters". Palestine Legal. September 7, 2018. Retrieved June 29, 2024.
In August, the Grayzone Project identified the owner of Canary Mission's domain name as Howard Davis Sterling...An article published by the Grayzone Project revealed how right-wing groups sent employees to an on-campus protest to compensate for a lack of grassroots support for Israel on campus.
- ^ Greenwald, Glenn (March 10, 2019). "NYT's Exposé on the Lies About Burning Humanitarian Trucks in Venezuela Shows How US Govt and Media Spread Fake News". The Intercept. Archived from the original on March 10, 2019. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
- ^ a b "Unpublished OPCW Douma Correspondence Casts Further Doubt on Claims of 'Doctored' Report". Bellingcat. October 26, 2020. Archived from the original on March 5, 2023. Retrieved September 12, 2021.
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.
- ^ a b Foresta, Mathew (April 29, 2022). "Meet the Sneakiest Defenders of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on September 2, 2023. Retrieved June 18, 2023.
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."
- ^ Davis, Charles (April 3, 2018). "An Inside Look at How Pro-Russia Trolls Got the SPLC to Censor a Commie". New Politics. Archived from the original on March 3, 2021. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
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.
- ^ Whitaker, Brian (November 4, 2021). "The 'Echo Chamber' of Syrian Chemical Weapons Conspiracy Theorists". New Lines Magazine. Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
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- ^ Brandt, Jessica (July 3, 2021). "How Autocrats Manipulate Online Information: Putin's and Xi's Playbooks". The Washington Quarterly. 44 (3). Taylor & Francis: 137. doi:10.1080/0163660X.2021.1970902. ISSN 0163-660X. S2CID 237597142. Archived from the original on September 2, 2023. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
- ^ a b Deibert, Michael (January 12, 2022). "In Latin America, Backers of Leftist Dictatorships Look the Other Way". New Lines Magazine. Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved June 17, 2022.
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."
- ^ "Nicaragua deports reporter who covered anti-Ortega protests". The Guardian. October 2, 2018. Archived from the original on June 9, 2022. Retrieved June 20, 2022.
- ^ a b "Periodistas que entrevistaron a Ortega rinden culto al dictador al son de "El Comandante se queda"". La Prensa (in Spanish). August 19, 2019. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved June 15, 2022.
- ^ Binder, Matt (February 24, 2021). "Twitter is now adding a controversial 'hacked materials' warning label to tweets". Mashable. Archived from the original on November 3, 2021. Retrieved February 24, 2021.
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.
- ^ Judson, Jen (September 10, 2019). "Virtual boots on the ground: British Army grapples with operating in the gray zone". DefenseNews; DSEI. Archived from the original on September 2, 2023. Retrieved December 9, 2021.
- ^ "Messing with the Truth: Disinformation in the West Spread by Max Blumenthal". VoxUkraine. November 28, 2023. Retrieved June 15, 2024.
- ^ Zuidijk, Daniel (October 26, 2022). "Europe's Web Summit Withdraws Invitation to the Grayzone Website". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on September 2, 2023. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
- ^ "Web Summit rescinds invitation to far-left website to attend 2022 conference". Irish Examiner. October 26, 2022. Archived from the original on October 27, 2022. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
- ^ "Связанное с российской пропагандой издание опубликовало статью с критикой фильма "Навальный". Текст написали с помощью нейросети, которая выдумала источники информации" [A publication associated with Russian propaganda published an article criticizing the film "Navalny". The text was written using a neural network that invented sources of information]. Meduza (in Russian). March 14, 2023. Archived from the original on March 14, 2023. Retrieved March 14, 2023.
- ^ a b "US media outlet with ties to RT uses AI-generated sources in article on Navalny's "fake poisoning"". The Insider. March 14, 2023. Retrieved June 3, 2024.
Blumenthal, who has authored multiple pieces for Russia Today, a state-owned news agency, and who is a frequent contributor to the outlet, established The Grayzone website just a month following his visit to Moscow. Anya Parampil and Alex Rubinstein, two other executives and journalists associated with The Grayzone, are also regular contributors to Russia Today, led by Margarita Simonyan.
- ^ VanBrugen, Isabel (March 15, 2023). "Navalny Film 'Debunk' Partly Written Using AI, Investigators Claim". Newsweek. Archived from the original on March 15, 2023. Retrieved March 15, 2023.
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- ^ Brugen, Isabel van (March 15, 2023). "Navalny film "debunk" author rejects accusation of writing with AI". Newsweek. Archived from the original on March 15, 2023. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
- ^ Prince-Gibson, Eetta (May 1, 2024). "Why Won't More Feminists Speak Up For Israeli Victims of Sexual Violence?". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on May 1, 2024.
It also corroborates other reports, most recently by the Association for Rape Crisis Centers in Israel as well as by the New York Times, Washington Post, Human Rights Watch, BBC, and others, regarding allegations of rape and ongoing sexual abuse of the hostages held in Gaza...More recently, articles in both the Grayzone and Mondoweiss analyze Patten's report and claim, in the words of the latter, that she actually provided "no evidence of systematic rape." The Grayzone also published a transcript of a discussion between Max Blumenthal and Chris Hedges in which they agree that Israel created a "shock-and-awe campaign of misinformation" in order to create "political space for its brutal assault on Gaza."
- ^ Menn, Joseph (June 2, 2024). "News site editor's ties to Iran, Russia show misinformation's complexity". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on June 2, 2024. Retrieved June 2, 2024.
- ^ Rachel Fink (June 4, 2024). "Report: Fringe anti-Israel News Site Editor Paid by Iran, Leaked Documents Show". Haaretz.
Grayzone has been accused of disinformation and strongly pro-Iran, pro-Russia and anti-Israel views
- ^ "RT America reporter arrested at Trump inauguration protest". U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. January 20, 2017. Retrieved June 3, 2024.
Alexander Rubinstein, a reporter with the Russian state-funded broadcaster RT America, was arrested while covering protests on the day of the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
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Basically, however, Grayzone (thegrayzone.com) is a one-stop propaganda shop, devoted largely to pushing a pro-Assad line on Syria, a pro-regime line on Venezuela, a pro-Putin line on Russia, and a pro-Hamas line on Israel and Palestine. Earlier in his career, Blumenthal had considered Muslim theocracies preferable to secular autocracies and had treated criticism of sharia law and Islamic governments, however reasonable and fact-based that criticism might be, as proof of anti-Muslim hatred.
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Xinhua's interview of de Zayas prominently features references to reporting by The Grayzone, an influential news website well known for misleading reporting, sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes, and conspiracy theories regarding Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine, and Xinjiang.71 Specifically, The Grayzone published articles that characterize US policies to address unfree labour within camp-to-factory pipelines72 in the XUAR as fundamentally 'anti-China' and that actually hurt communities targeted by Chinese counterinsurgency since they 'cost Uyghur workers their jobs'.
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