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LifeSiteNews
| Some dare call it Conspiracy |
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| What THEY don't want you to know! |
| Sheeple wakers |
“”LifeSiteNews is a superspreader of confusion, not an antidote. In tightly written prose, it mimics journalism by reporting on scientific data and studies, but so selectively as to be highly misleading. The takeaways from this skewed coverage include: don’t wear face masks; don’t get a COVID-19 vaccine; view the pandemic as a tool of the elite to achieve global political domination.
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| —Paul Moses, Commonweal Magazine, 2021[1] |
LifeSiteNews is a Canadian far right webshite that propagates misleading information, conspiracy theories, and virulent anti-abortion propaganda.[2] In 2021, they were banned from several social media platforms for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.
LifeSiteNews was formed in 1997 by the Canadian lobbyist organization Campaign Life Coalition to spew anti-abortion propaganda. Founder John Henry Westin claimed that the mainstream media was involved in a conspiracy against the anti-abortion movement, and that LifeSiteNews served to circumvent the mainstream media.[3]:172
They also publish material railing against contraception, homosexuality, and transgender rights. To push their agenda, they promote conspiracy theories and flagrant bullshit.[4][5] In 2015, they joined wingnut publication World Net Daily and published an interview with Zachary King, who claimed that he performed "satanic rituals" inside abortion clinics.[6] They have a long history of publishing conspiracy theories related to Planned Parenthood, their ultimate bogeyman, finding common ground with QAnon.[7] In 2019, they published a story claiming that drugs used to treat gender dysphoria in transgender children are linked to “thousands” of deaths.[8][9]
Unsurprisingly, LifeSiteNews is a supporter of former US President Donald Trump, and has spread misleading claims about Trump's attempts to overthrow the 2020 U.S. presidential election.[4][5][10] In 2020, the site published a screed written by a cranky Cardinal that alleges a deep state conspiracy associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 racial unrest.[11] Many articles on the site are explicitly tagged with "New World Order", another favorite of the paranoid conspiracy crowd.[4] One of the "New World Order" articles posted by LifeSiteNews is a verbose, conspiracy filled rant by American conspiracy theorist and quack Joseph Mercola about Big Pharma, where he alleges that "Big Pharma" and the mainstream media are largely owned by two asset management companies, and that these two companies form a "secret monopoly" that "own just about everything else you can think of too."[12]
YouTube banned LifeSiteNews in February 2021 for repeatedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines against it, in violation of YouTube's medical misinformation policy.[13][14] Facebook similarly kickbanned them in May 2021 for repeatedly violating its policies regarding COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation.[15][16] They have earned temporary bans from Twitter on multiple occasions, including tweeting an article that demonized homosexuals by citing a rise in sexually transmitted diseases,[17] and for spreading COVID-19 misinformation and lies.[18]
References[edit]
- ↑ Paul Moses, Sins of Omission: Far-right Catholic media spreads COVID-19 misinformation. Commonweal, 13 March 2021.
- ↑ LifeSiteNews profile. Media Bias/Fact Check, 8 June 2021. "We rate LifeSiteNews far right biased for story selection that always favors evangelical Christianity and Questionable based on the promotion of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and many failed fact checks."
- ↑ Paul Saurette and Kelly Gordon, The Changing Voice of the Anti-Abortion Movement. University of Toronto Press, ISBN 9781442615694.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 The biggest Canadian far-right news site you probably haven’t heard of: LifeSiteNews, where Catholicism meets QAnon. Canadian Anti-Hate Network, 22 February 2021.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Kathryn Joyce, Deep State, Deep Church: How Qanon and Trumpism have infected the Catholic Church. Archived from Vanity Fair, 30 October 2020.
- ↑ Former Satanist: ‘I performed satanic rituals inside abortion clinics’ Archived from LifeSiteNews, 9 September 2015.
- ↑ Sarah Posner, QAnon and the Assault on Planned Parenthood. Rolling Stone, 25 March 2021.
- ↑ Martin M. Barillas, Thousands of deaths linked to drugs used as puberty blockers for gender-confused kids. Archived from LifeSiteNews, 24 September 2019.
- ↑ Tim Fitzsimmons, A viral fake news story linked trans health care to 'thousands' of deaths. NBC News, 27 September 2019.
- ↑ Ali Swenson, Skewed data fuel questionable claim on Trump election lawsuits. Associated Press, 12 February 2021.
- ↑ Archbishop Viganò‘s powerful letter to President Trump: Eternal struggle between good and evil playing out right now. Archived from LifeSiteNews, 6 June 2020.
- ↑ Who owns Big Pharma + Big Media? You’ll never guess. Archived from LifeSiteNews, 21 June 2021.
- ↑ Carter Sherman, YouTube Just Banned a Popular Anti-Abortion Channel for COVID Conspiracies. Vice, 11 February 2021.
- ↑ Brianna January, YouTube banned LifeSiteNews for COVID-19 and vaccine disinformation. The same lies are all over Facebook. Media Matters, 18 February 2021.
- ↑ Elizabeth Bibi, Media Matters, GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, and NARAL react to Facebook’s permanent ban of LifeSiteNews. Media Matters, 7 May 2021.
- ↑ Jack Jenkins, LifeSiteNews removed from Facebook for violating COVID-19 misinformation policies. Religion News Service, 5 May 2021.
- ↑ Trudy Ring, Right-Wing Site Blocked From Twitter for Laughably Antigay Article. The Advocate, 19 October 2018.
- ↑ Calvin Freiberger, Twitter suspends LifeSite for covering Israeli COVID vaccine data. Archived from LifeSiteNews, 2 March 2021.