If you are an English speaker looking for positive coverage of the most repressive regimes on the planet, you probably already know about The Grayzone. Founded in December 2015 by Max Blumenthal, son of longtime Hillary Clinton fixer Sidney Blumenthal, The Grayzone has been a one-stop shop for stories fluffing the reputations of Russia, China, Iran, and of course Hamas.
The mystery of The Grayzone, for some, has been whether the outlet is being paid for their PR by the autocrats and terrorists they defend. Over the weekend, The Washington Post published an intriguing piece revealing that one of The Grayzone’s editors, Wyatt Reed, was compensated for his freelance work for Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV while he was also working for the Russian state organ Sputnik.
This has been a pattern for The Grayzone. Another reporter for the website who is featured on its masthead, Anya Parampil, is a former host for RT, the Russian state propaganda outlet banned in Europe and Canada after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In 2023, Parampil wrote that she contacted a senior Russian official to help Tucker Carlson score an interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin. (Parampil and Blumenthal wed in 2020.)
There is also the fact that The Grayzone’s pieces have been reprinted and cited by authoritarian regimes in their own outlets. A study from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in March 2021 found that between December 2019 and February 2021, English-language state-run Chinese media cited The Grayzone 252 times. That’s not surprising considering that The Grayzone has attacked researchers calling attention to the plight of the Uyghur minority in China.
All of that said, The Washington Post piece does not answer the central mystery of The Grayzone. Hiring staff that received a paycheck from authoritarian propaganda outlets is not the same as taking covert funding from those countries directly. And while Blumenthal has been a frequent guest on both PressTV and RT (he even attended the infamous Moscow RT Gala in 2015 that got retired general Michael Flynn in so much trouble), he has consistently said that his website is funded by its readers.
And for all we know, that is true. Still, if a “news” site keeps explaining away the aggression, atrocities, and oppression of the worst regimes on earth, does it really matter if the regimes themselves are paying for such great press? The sad truth is they probably don’t need to pay, as Blumenthal’s own checkered journalism career shows there are plenty of Americans who are willing to defend the most indefensible tyrants out of only their conviction.
Eli Lake is a Free Press columnist. Follow him at @EliLake.
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Excellent. Shine a bright light!
I'm not totally comfortable with the idea of "America's enemies." If we were still in a nationalistic/patriotic country where people proudly hung flags, honored their past, etc, I could jump on board with framing things in nationalist terms. But we're not. Every sporting event has 2 national anthems. Statues of the founding fathers are being taken down. More than half of law school graduates say the constitution is racist. Schools teach that America is a colonial settler state that has no right to its land. The US military openly discriminates against some applicants achieving officer positions. The border is wide open, and tens of millions of foreign nationals pour over it.
Who are America's enemies? In my mind, they're right here, inside America. The FBI going after parents at school board meetings or people going to Latin Mass - they're a ton scarier to me, a more real threat, than Iran maybe getting a nuclear weapon. Oregon jails releasing mhundreds of rapists and violent criminals - that might affect me (if I go to Oregon), while China won't. Mexican drug gangs sending operatives into America and flooding the streets with fentanyl - yeah, that affects me, in a way that Russia will never do.