YourNewsWire

YourNewsWire (styled as YourNewsWire.com ), later known as NewsPunch, is a Los Angeles-based clickbait fake news website known for disseminating conspiracy theories and misleading information, contrary to its claimed in its original motto (“News. Truth. Unfiltered”). The NewsPunch motto was changed to "Where Mainstream Fears to Tread".

According to Josh Boswell of The Sunday Times, Sean Adl-Tabatabai (a former television producer) is the owner and ‘Editor-in-chief’. However, YourNewsWire also claims that it is owned by holding company called The People’s Voice (Incorporated), which is the name of their Facebook account.

Carol Adl (the mother of Sean Adl-Tabatabai according to UK-based marketing magazine The Drum), Edmundo Burr and Baxter Dmitry (who once stole the photo of a Latvian computer programmer ) are the website’s ‘staff writers’.

History
According to the Internet Archive (since YourNewsWire spoke nothing much about their history), Sean Adl-Tabatabai created YourNewsWire around the summer of 2014. According to Boswell, Sean Adl-Tabatabai was a former BBC and MTV television producer in the United Kingdom, but afterwards he helped operate the website of conspiracy theorist David Icke … who also worked for the BBC.

Political stance
Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) classifies YourNewsWire as ‘Conspiracy/Pseudoscience’, arguing that it “mixes” conspiracy theories with legitimate news, presumably to confuse readers into believing in the conspiracy theories.

YourNewsWire appears to be pro-Russian: According to Boswell, the European Union’s East StratCom Task Force criticised YourNewsWire for using fake news to favour Russian policy. However, Joel Harding (a Kremlin propaganda expert) believed that Russians were using YourNewsWire as a mule or proxy to spread disinformation.

(In)accuracy record
On 24 May 2017, Snopes warned that YourNewsWire had a “long record of promoting false information”, after debunking a false claim (by YourNewsWire) that a suicide bombing attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, United Kingdom, was a hoax or an inside job. YourNewsWire was one of the websites that promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

The Manchester attacks claim was the eighth time that Snopes debunked YourNewsWire, having previously chided them for falsely claiming that Adolf Hitler faked his suicide and escaped to Argentina, and that 25 Million Fraudulent Votes Were Cast for Hillary Clinton.

Boswell of The Sunday Times also cited YourNewsWire for falsely claiming that Queen Elizabeth II threatened to abdicate if the United Kingdom voted to remain in the European Union. It appears that the ‘abdication’ article was created to give YourNewsWire an excuse to claim that they were right when the UK did vote to leave the EU: however, Queen Elizabeth II would certainly do nothing regardless of the outcome.

Self-censorship
YourNewsWire is unsurprisingly not ‘unfiltered’, as the website’s slogan claims: despite Sean and Sinclair Adl-Tabatabai performing one of the first ever same sex marriages in the United Kingdom in 2014, YourNewsWire has to date not covered the Chechen crackdown on gay men: the BBC and Reuters have already covered it.

Examples of (clickbait) headlines

 * Sampled on 25 May 2017


 * “Putin: New World Order Are In Final Stages Of Their European Masterplan”
 * “Amnesty International: US Gave ISIS $1 Billion Worth Of Arms In 2016”
 * “Catholic Church Tells Bishops They Don’t Have To Report Pedophilia”
 * “US Navy SEALs Kill Five Civilians In Yemen Raid: Reprieve”
 * “Islamic State Clash With Philippine Army, Take Control Of Marawi”
 * “: ‘Human Flesh Is The Best Meat; Cannibalism Got A Bad Rap’”
 * "Texas Church Shooter Was Antifa Member Who Vowed To Start Civil War"

Response
In addition to widespread criticism of YourNewsWire for publishing fake stories, Google banned the site from its advertising network, in response to The Sunday Times’ investigation.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against YourNewsWire, Sean Adl-Tabatabai stubbornly insists that his website is “legitimate”, even going as far as to accuse The Sunday Times of “publishing fake news against him”.