From PayPal to Global News to anonymous hackers, there are forces that prefer you don’t read Consortium News.
Monument to First Amendment in Philadelphia. (Kyle Dickson/Flickr)
By Joe Lauria
In an age of growing censorship and suppression of news, Consortium News is not exaggerating when it says it has abundant evidence of efforts to marginalize or silence us.
November 2016: At Thanksgiving eight years ago, a shady outfit called PropOrNot included CN on a blacklist of sites which this obscure group accused of publishing Kremlin propaganda. The Washington Post unethically allowed the anonymous people behind PropOrNot a voice on a national platform to smear CN and dozens of other publications without a shred of evidence nor due process.
October 2020: The Canadian electronic intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), falsely accused Consortium News in an article and television report by Global News, Canada’s second most-watched private TV network, of being in the forefront of a Russian cyber attack against Canadian politicians. CN sued Global News for defamation in U.S. federal court on counsel’s advice. The case was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.
February 2021: YouTube removes an episode of CN Live! and gives a strike against Consortium News, suspending it for one week after misinterpreting a one-minute scene from guest Greg Palast’s documentary showing Trump supporters claiming the 2020 election was stolen, when the subject of Palast’s film was actually about voter suppression by Republicans in Georgia.
March 2022: Three months after we began reporting on Russia’s intervention in the Ukrainian civil war, the media rating agency NewsGuard wrote to accuse CN of publishing “false content” in its reporting on the 2014 Kiev coup and the role of neo-Nazism in the country. It later assigns Consortium News a red flag warning its subscribers to “proceed with caution.”
May 2022: PayPal permanently banned Consortium News from using its money transfer system, hurting our fundraising efforts. PayPal steadfastly refused to say why. But its user agreement prohibits spreading “misinformation,” and since information is our only trade, it was logical to conclude, given the hysteria surrounding the subject, that it objected to our Ukraine coverage.
June 2022: The GrayZone reported on leaked emails which showed that a British Foreign Office official had contacted Nina Jankowicz, who at the time was heading the Biden administration’s now disbanded Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Homeland Security. In an email, the official said he would look into CN‘s editor. He said Jankowicz told him she would “ask around” about Consortium News.
It is not clear who she asked, whether in or out of government. But Jankowicz told the official she thinks CN was not being “funded” — presumably by a foreign power such as Russia — but instead were just being “useful idiots.”
June 2022: Twitter, under previous management, permanently suspends CN columnist Patrick Lawrence. In 2022 it also suspends CN columnist Scott Ritter, who is reinstated by X under new management. Lawrence remains suspended without explanation. (CN is currently appealing X’s suspension of CN Live! executive producer Cathy Vogan.)
October 2023: Consortium News sues NewsGuard for defamation and the U.S. government for violating the First Amendment.
October 2024: According to our web host, Consortium News‘ web site is hacked. All of its content is removed and all staff is barred from entering the site, which for three days was replaced with a start-up landing page.
December 2024: Oral arguments in federal court in the Southern District of New York are expected soon on motions by defendants NewsGuard and the U.S. government to dismiss the case.
A pattern seems to be developing here: a clear effort to hinder us from delivering to you our alternative view of the news independent of the mainstream and free of influence from any corporation, foundation or government.
But we are not lying down. Help us to keep going, no matter what they throw at us by generously contributing today to Consortium News’ Winter Fund Drive.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News.
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As others have said… If the liars and imperialists are after you, it means they feel you are a danger to them… What a compliment! In Spain where I live, CN is my goto place for real information…THANK YOU.
Interesting piece by Lena Hertzog: hxxps://vimeo.com/1020799579
Thank You Joe
You know you are doing something right when ‘they’ target you. Keep up the outstanding work. Good luck ‘giving it’ to so called Newsguard.
No pasaran!
They shall not pass!
La Pasionaria.
“…obviously the news product is going to reflect the interests and the commitments of the sellers, the buyers and the product. They present a picture of reality that conforms to the needs of power. And power in our own society happens to be largely vested in a State/Corporate nexus.”
-Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky – What Makes The Media Mainstream 1991
We all should know that governments, including the US, no matter which major party is in charge, do not want truths to be told to the public. The western media does not tell us what is really happening here or in the rest of the world. Corporations control governments and media to ensure we are all told the lies they tell. CN gives us real news, The Canary in the UK does the same. Also, Al Jazeera gives the best broadcast on what is happening in the Middle East and other places in the world. The western media is prejudiced against telling us about such places as the Middle East. Why do they do that?, you may ask. If they told the truth without showing it, people would learn the things from which they been shielded. Imagine what might happen if we learned the truth. The truth is that they twist stories around to change meanings and also blame and arrest whistle blowers who are trying to improve things in governments and corporations for the betterment of the people.
They “can’t handle the truth”! Keep on doing what you are doing. You are making a difference.
If your blood doesn’t boil after reading this litany of criminal suppression and harassment that Lauria has just laid out above, you have absolutely no drive whatsoever to be informed by the truth.
Last month when opening Consortium News on my iPhone using Safari the page would show up in Chinese. Using the Translate to try to get it back to English would keep it at Chinese. However when I would go to an article and used Translate I was able to get the article back in English. So the problem was with the main page, and not with the articles.
I only had the problem on my iPhone with Safari. I did not have the problem on my Mac laptop with either Firefox or Safari.
It is now working fine.
All I can say is, f’k those people. Just keep doing what you do best.
Spot-on!
I’m happy you are back to reading this the easier way than scrolling down and searching out your November and December archives. If my country believed in supporting retirees I would send you a donation but I can support you in other ways and I do in referring this great HONEST site. We must persist against the authoritarian and totalitarian measures our western countries have laid on us and let them know that their propagandization of reality and bending it to warp the truth while projecting what we are doing on our “enemies” that we have imagined live under our beds and in our closets. Enough of us are aware and steeled against imperial lies.
Having taught post-colonialism, I realize there are many western raised persons who are completely unaware of the dangers we are in at present.
The liars, murderers and thieves who have captured our institutions have been outed and we have independent news sources like CN to thank for outing them. They are scared to death of losing their power and are behaving as any corrupt criminal cabal behaves when cornered. I will be sending my contribution. Keep Consortium News alive!
Bravo! Great comment.
Obviously, I do read it nonetheless, so thank you for being there. However, the site still doesn’t work properly for me. In particular, if I press the “Consortium News” header, which should return to the home page, it instead returns weeks back, to Nov. 9, every time. I’ve cleared my cache several times now, so I suspect there’s still something wrong with the header link.
Fortunately, I get your email newsletter, and the links in that work correctly, so I keep up that way.
sorry to complain, but I hope that info will be helpful.