“On 2 August 2019, an anonymous internet campaign named Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) celebrated its apparent success in downsizing The Canary. For six months, SFFN had been trying to demonetise The Canary by lobbying companies to remove advertisements from its website.”
“The Canary can now reveal that Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, launched the organisation that now runs SFFN.”
“SFFN CEO Imran Ahmed has also worked closely with a number of Labour figures previously involved in the campaign to remove Jeremy Corbyn as party leader.”
“Rachel Riley, a prominent supporter of SFFN, is listed as a patron of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an organisation closely linked to SSFN.”
“CCDH also shares its address with “Blue Labour” campaign group Labour Together, formerly directed by McSweeney, and now co-directed by Labour shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy.”
“While posing as a neutral body concerned with “the rapid rise in Fake News”, operated by people who are supposedly “pro-truth, pro-balance and pro-responsible news”, SFFN in fact appears to be a highly politicised pressure group, and part of the wider onslaught against the British left.”
“A statistical analysis of SFFN’s lobbying efforts supports this assessment. Between its founding and the 2019 general election, SFFN targeted The Canary – which the campaign acknowledged was its largest target – more than any other website, with 176 individual posts on Twitter. The operation has been scaled down since the election, with 42 individual posts targeting The Canary in a greater amount of time.”
“During its effort to demonetise The Canary, SFFN did not publish its own sources of funding.”
“Today, CCDH lists Countdown figure Rachel Riley as its only patron, adding that it receives additional funds from “philanthropic trusts and members of the public”.”
“SFFN and CCDH’s opaque funding raises an elementary concern. If an organisation cannot reveal its sources of income, it cannot be trusted to act with independence or integrity.”
“SFFN would argue that, while websites that publish fake news have a right to free speech, they don’t have a right to make money from it. But on what authority can this group decide what is and is not ‘fake news’?”
“Unlike the content of SFFN’s Twitter threads, The Canary is monitored by an independent press regulator. We invite our readers to request a correction should they find inaccurate information. When The Canary makes mistakes, a correction is not buried in the depths of the website, but shared widely. Indeed, these standards are far higher than those of the corporate media.”
“Attacks on The Canary have continued over recent weeks, with editor-at-large Kerry-Anne Mendoza’s Twitter account being suspended following “a series of coordinated and vexatious complaints”.”
“In a scathing article published in Jacobin Magazine about CCDH, journalist Branko Marcetic warned: “They’ll Come For Us [the left] Next”.”
“It seems they already have.”
Read more: Exclusive: Labour right linked to campaign to shut down The Canary
2021-week27
