YourNewsWire

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“”Overall, we rate YourNewsWire a Tin Foil Hat level conspiracy website that has zero credibility due to the routine publishing of fake news.

—Media Bias Fact Check

YourNewsWire (styled as YourNewsWire.com), later known as NewsPunch, and later still as The People's Voice, 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.

YourNewsWire is known for its frequent re-branding, perhaps in an attempt to evade social media site bans and advertisers who have clamped down on advertising to known fake news sites. In 2018, YourNewsWire.com changed its primary host name to NewsPunch.com. Sometime in 2023, Newspunch changed its host name again, becoming ThePeoplesVoice.TV. (This domain was previously used by David Icke from 2013 to 2014 in a failed attempt to launch an Internet television station.)

Carol Adl (the mother of Sean Adl-Tabatabai according to UK-based marketing magazine The Drum), Edmundo Burr and Milo Yiannopoulos fanboy 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. According to Sean Adl-Tabatabai, this relationship began when he worked behind the camera for a MTV UK program examining conspiracy theories. One episode focused on Icke. While he saw Icke as "very, very out-there", he found some of his ideas, suck as Icke's metaphysical notion of reality "compelling". After finding out that Icke's family had for years been harassed for his beliefs, he contacted Icke to advise against participating in the show. Thus began a partnership with Icke.

Seeing the rise of Alex Jones' Infowars in America, Icke and Adl-Tabatabai decided to cook up their own internet TV station, the above mentioned People's Voice. The station never got off the ground and faltered quickly. In addition, according to Adl-Tabatabai at least, his relationship with Icke ended when Icke found out that he was homosexual.

Broke, Adl-Tabatabai moved into his husband (Sinclair Treadway)'s parents' home, which was in Los Angeles. There, the couple began posting links on the Facebook page for the failed endeavor with Icke, which Adl-Tabatabai still had control over. This curation endeavor would soon birth the fake news website YourNewsWire.

Sean Adl-Tabatabai's mother was into alternative medicine, which may have influenced his receptiveness towards conspiracies.

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.

In a 2017 article from The Hollywood Reporter, Sean Adl-Tabatabai (with his husband Sinclair Treadway) were described as "alienated liberals" who were supportive of "anti-establishment" politicians like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. According to the article, they both developed suspicions of established stories and presumed facts due to what they saw as mainstream media failures, such as excessive cheerleading during the Iraq War, or ignoring rumors of BBC host Jimmy Savile's sexual abuse of children.

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 an interview, Adl-Tabatabai admitted that he loved the Kremlin mouthpiece Russia Today, and frequently used it as a source for his articles. (Adl-Tabatabai was also fond of other conspiracy theory websites such as Infowars). Adl-Tabatabai denied any direct links to the Kremlin, however.

Unsurprisingly, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, YourNewsWire continued to propagate pro-Kremlin propaganda; trolls on Twitter in particular used these articles to spread anti-Ukraine misinformation.

(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, as well as being one of the key websites to push the Frazzledrip conspiracy theory. In addition, YourNewsWire had close ties to QAnon, pushing multiple false stories related to the conspiracy theory that even formed the basis of one of the "Q drops" on 8chan.

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.

Between 2017 and 2018, the Poynter Institute found in an analysis that during that time period, four major fact-checking organizations debunked YourNewsWire at least 80 times. (Poynter also found that, regardless of this dismal track record, YourNewsWire was still allowed to publish on Facebook.)

Between August 2017 and April 11 2024, the fact-checking website Lead Stories posted over 190 debunking stories on YourNewsWire's articles. The articles include many conspiracy theories, including falsehoods on such topics as the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates, anti-vaccination movement bullshit, and COVID-19. Articles on the later frequently referenced a bogus conspiracy theory about "VAIDS", which refers to a mythical AIDS-like syndrome that somehow was caused by vaccines.

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”
• “Katy Perry: ‘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”.

External links

• The webshite itself