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NewsPunch is a Los Angeles-based fake news website known for spreading conspiracy theories and political misinformation peddling fake news, mixed in with real news stories.[1] Originally named Your News Wire,[4][10][11] it was founded in 2014 by Sean Adl-Tabatabai and Sinclair Treadway.[2][5][12] In November 2018, it rebranded itself as NewsPunch, and began redirecting yournewswire.com traffic to newspunch.com.[10]

NewsPunch
Type of site
Fake news,[1] Politics, News and opinion
Available inEnglish
Founder(s)Sean Adl-Tabatabai, Sinclair Treadway
Websitenewspunch.com, yournewswire.com
Alexa rankNegative increase 28,716 (Global, August 2018)
Launched2014
Current statusActive

A 2017 Buzzfeed News report identified NewsPunch as being the second-largest source of popular fake stories spread on Facebook that year,[5] and a June 2018 Poynter analysis identified NewsPunch as being debunked over 80 times in 2017 and 2018 by Poynter-accredited factcheckers such as Snopes, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and the Associated Press.[6]

The European Union's East StratCom Task Force has criticized NewsPunch for spreading Russian propaganda, a charge Adl-Tabatabai denies.[2]

Regular contributors to NewsPunch include Adl-Tabatabai, a former BBC and MTV employee from London previously employed by professional conspiracy theorist David Icke[13], Adl-Tabatabai's mother Carol Adl, an alternative health practitioner, and Baxter Dmitry, who had previously been posing as an unrelated Latvian man using a stolen profile photo.[14][15]

Fake news storiesEdit

NewsPunch has published false stories, including:

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

  1. ^ a b [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
  2. ^ a b c Boswell, Josh (2017). "Mother churns out stories for master of fake news". The Sunday Times. ISSN 0956-1382. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  3. ^ "Don't get fooled by these fake news sites". CBS News. 2017-02-10. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  4. ^ a b "Websites that Post Fake and Satirical Stories - FactCheck.org". FactCheck.org. 2017-07-06. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  5. ^ a b c "These Are 50 Of The Biggest Fake News Hits On Facebook In 2017". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  6. ^ a b "Fact-checkers have debunked this fake news site 80 times. It's still publishing on Facebook". Poynter. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  7. ^ "YourNewsWire.com's file". @politifact. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  8. ^ "No evidence Lisa Page blamed DNC hack on Chinese". @politifact. Retrieved 2018-08-27. ...Your News Wire which frequently publishes fake news...
  9. ^ "FACT CHECK: Did Melania Trump Ban White House Staff from Taking Flu Shot?". Snopes.com. Retrieved 2018-08-27. ...a consistent purveyor of fake news and political disinformation, YourNewsWIre[sic]...
  10. ^ a b c Frier, Sarah (2018-11-04). "Facebook Tamped Down on Hoax Sites, But Polarization Thrives". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2018-11-06.
  11. ^ "FACT CHECK: Did a Starbucks Executive Say That 'White Men Are the Root of All Evil'?". Snopes.com. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  12. ^ "L.A. Alt-Media Agitator (Not Breitbart) Clashes With Google, Snopes". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
  13. ^ Boswell, Josh (2017-01-29). "Mother churns out stories for master of fake news". The Sunday Times. ISSN 0956-1382. Retrieved 2019-05-24. After working as a television producer for the BBC and MTV, he took a job helping to run the conspiracy theory site of David Icke, a former BBC sports presenter who claims the world is secretly run by alien reptiles in disguise.
  14. ^ Boswell, Josh (2017). "Mother churns out stories for master of fake news". The Sunday Times. ISSN 0956-1382. Retrieved 2018-09-05. Another prolific writer on the site goes by the name of Baxter Dmitry. The photograph next to the author’s name was in fact that of a Latvian computer programmer, who told The Sunday Times he was not Dmitry and his identity had been stolen.
  15. ^ "Sean Adl-Tabatabai on being in the eye of the 'fake news' storm | London Evening Standard". 2018-08-16. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  16. ^ "FBI: Pizzagate Arrests 'Imminent' In Washington Pedophile Ring Bust". Your News Wire (archived by archive.is). 2017-02-04. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  17. ^ "FBI Insider: Clinton Emails Linked To Political Pedophile Sex Ring". Your News Wire (archived by archive.is). 2018-03-09. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  18. ^ "How The Bizarre Conspiracy Theory Behind "Pizzagate" Was Spread". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  19. ^ "Debunking hoaxes, fake news about the Las Vegas massacre". PolitiFact. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  20. ^ "FACT CHECK: Was the Manchester Terror Attack a 'False Flag'?". Snopes.com. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  21. ^ "Website peddles false claim about Bill Gates, vaccinations". @politifact. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  22. ^ "FACT CHECK: Did Bill Gates Admit Vaccinations Are Designed So Governments Can Depopulate the World?". Snopes.com. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  23. ^ "FACT CHECK: Did a Study Determine 25 Million Fraudulent Votes Were Cast for Hillary Clinton?". Snopes.com. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  24. ^ "Fake news faults Clintons for Bourdain's death". @politifact. Retrieved 2018-08-27.