The Grayzone was founded as a blog called The Grayzone Project in December 2015 by
Max Blumenthal.[4][20][24] The blog was hosted on
AlterNet until early 2018, when The Grayzone became independent of the website.[4][40]
Research from the
Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which studied 28 social media accounts, individuals, outlets and organisations, stated that Grayzone reporter
Aaron Maté was the "most prolific spreader of disinformation" on matters concerning Syria amongst its study group, having surpassed
Vanessa Beeley in 2020.[45][46]
When a
humanitarian aid convoy on the border of Venezuela caught fire in February 2019, The Grayzone published an article by Blumenthal in which he argued that the U.S. government and
mainstream media had falsely reported forces supporting President
Nicolás Maduro as the individuals responsible for sparking the flames, writing that "the claim was absurd on its face."
Glenn Greenwald, writing in The Intercept, commented that the story "compiled substantial evidence strongly suggesting that the trucks were set ablaze by anti-Maduro protesters".[47]
The
English Wikipedia formally deprecated the use of The Grayzone as a source for facts in its articles in March 2020, citing issues with the website's factual reliability.[4][22]
The Grayzone promoted the
Nicaraguan government's narrative on the
2018–2022 Nicaraguan protests and the November
2021 Nicaraguan general election.[6][48][24] The platform also conducted an "unquestioning interview", according to The Guardian, with Nicaraguan President
Daniel Ortega.[49][50] Blumenthal and Norton expressed their support to the regime dancing to "El Comandante se queda" (English: The Comandante Stays) a cumbia song composed in support of Ortega during the 2018 protests.[50]The Grayzone published an
open letter, promoted by
RT, criticizing The Guardian's coverage of Nicaragua and one of its contributors,
Carl David Goette-Luciak. Goette-Luciak was later arrested and deported by the Nicaraguan government. John Perry, writing under the pseudonym Charles Redvers, published a "confession" on The Grayzone of student protester
Valeska Sandoval.[24] The confession was false and Sandoval
made it under duress while in prison.[6][24][48]
In February 2021, tweets concerning a Grayzone article by Blumenthal were the first to receive a
Twitter warning label stating "These materials may have been obtained through hacking". The story was titled "
Reuters,
BBC, and
Bellingcat participated in covert
UK Foreign Office–funded programs to 'weaken Russia', leaked docs reveal". The story referred to hacked and leaked documents and alleged that a British Army unit has used "social media to help fight wars".[51][52]
Amid the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, the website has published
disinformation, including the debunked claim that Ukrainian fighters were using civilians as
human shields, and that the 2022
Mariupol theatre bombing was staged by the
Azov Regiment to warrant
NATO intervention.[31]The Grayzone's invitation to the 2022
Web Summit, the largest technology conference in Europe, was withdrawn over backlash against the website's anti-Ukrainian narratives amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[11][53][54] After the documentary Navalny won an
Academy Award in February 2023, The Grayzone published an article by
Lucy Komisar criticizing the film. The article was shown to be written by the neural network
Writesonic and to use reference sources that did not exist.[55][56][57][58]
In March 2023, The Grayzone published an article by
Lucy Komisar, which was partly written by the
artificial intelligence writing assistant
Writesonic, and included fictional sources. The Grayzone amended the article following a controversy about the use of AI in the writing of the article, and then removed it at the request of Komisar.[59]
Funding
Blumenthal has stated that The Grayzone receives funding through
Patreon and from "private friends of mine who are basically progressive Americans who support progressive media". He said The Grayzone receives no state funding from Russia or China.[60]
In August 2023,
GoFundMe froze more than $90,000 from 1,100 contributors to The Grayzone, citing unspecified "external concerns". Blumenthal said he believed the concerns were political and related to the platform's coverage of the war in Ukraine. The Grayzone's managing editor Wyatt Reed had also had issues with
PayPal and
Venmo since reporting on Ukraine.[1]
It has also been sharply criticized for de-emphasizing the scale of the
Xinjiang internment camps and other Chinese state abuses against Uyghurs.[4][20][64]
The Russian fake news website
Peace Data has republished articles by The Grayzone in order to build a reputation as a
progressive and
anti-Western media source and to attract contributors.[65] False claims published by The Grayzone are referenced by many
Twitter users who back Assad and the
Russian government.[26]
The
government of China, officials within the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and
Chinese state media have viewed The Grayzone's coverage of China positively.[3][4][20][21] The site has promoted Chinese Communist Party
narratives on
Xinjiang,
Hong Kong, and
Taiwan.[66] In order to dispute accusations of ongoing atrocities in Xinjiang, Chinese state media and Chinese officials have increasingly cited posts from The Grayzone in their public communications.[69] According to a report from the
Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Chinese state-controlled media and affiliated entities began to amplify articles from The Grayzone in December 2019 after the website posted an article critical of Xinjiang researcher
Adrian Zenz.[3] Chinese state-controlled media cited The Grayzone at least 313 times between December 2019 and February 2021, 252 of which were in English-language publications, the report said.[3][29][70]
^
abcdefghijklmnopqThompson, Caitlin (July 30, 2020).
"Enter the Grayzone: fringe leftists deny the scale of China's Uyghur oppression". Coda Story.
Archived from the original on October 19, 2021. Retrieved September 12, 2021. The Grayzone has followed a similar path on Syria, challenging reports of atrocities by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. ...Based on a desire for a multipolar world, in which global military, cultural and economic power is distributed among multiple nation states and Western influence greatly diminished, they have been quick to argue on behalf of authoritarian regimes such as China and Syria.
^
abcdFiorella, Giancarlo; Godart, Charlotte; Waters, Nick (July 14, 2021). "Digital Integrity: Exploring Digital Evidence Vulnerabilities and Mitigation Strategies for Open Source Researchers". Journal of International Criminal Justice. 19 (1).
Oxford University Press: 147–161.
doi:
10.1093/jicj/mqab022.
ISSN1478-1387.
Archived from the original on November 5, 2021. Retrieved April 6, 2022. These grassroots communities are particularly evident on Twitter, where they coalesce around individual personalities like right-wing activist Andy Ngo, and around platforms with uncritical pro-Kremlin and pro-Assad editorial lines, like The Grayzone and MintPress News. These personalities and associated outlets act as both producers of counterfactual theories, as well as hubs around which individuals with similar beliefs rally. The damage that these ecosystems and the theories that they spawn can inflict on digital evidence is not based on the quality of the dis/misinformation that they produce but rather on the quantity.
^Foresta, Matthew (April 29, 2022).
"Meet the Sneakiest Defenders of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine". The Daily Beast.
Archived from the original on June 4, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022. The Grayzone, has consistently denied that the Assad regime used chemical weapons on its own people when, indeed, they did.
^"Unpublished OPCW Douma Correspondence Casts Further Doubt on Claims of 'Doctored' Report". Bellingcat. October 26, 2020.
Archived from the original on March 5, 2023. Retrieved September 12, 2021. journalists have seized upon the documents released by 'Alex' as evidence that the OPCW falsified its report on Douma in order to frame the Syrian government for the attack and justify missile strikes launched by the US, UK and France against the government of Bashar al-Assad. Peter Hitchens at the Mail on Sunday, and Aaron Mate at The Grayzone have both written extensively on the matter.
^Davis, Charles (April 3, 2018).
"An Inside Look at How Pro-Russia Trolls Got the SPLC to Censor a Commie". New Politics.
Archived from the original on March 3, 2021. Retrieved June 13, 2022. In a July 7, 2017 article for his self-funded Grayzone Project, Blumenthal and his associate Benjamin Norton likewise cast doubt on the guilt of the only party known to have possessed and used sarin in the Syrian conflict.
^
abDeibert, Michael (January 12, 2022).
"In Latin America, Backers of Leftist Dictatorships Look the Other Way". New Lines Magazine.
Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved June 17, 2022. During the elections themselves...a carnival sideshow of figures descended on the country to be feted by [the] regime... ubiquitous was the U.S. journalist Ben Norton, affiliated with the website The Grayzone, which has made something of a cottage industry of defending dictators and their crimes. A reliable government booster nonetheless forced to admit on state television that there were no lines at polling booths, Norton was lampooned by the Nicaraguan blog Bacanalnica as a "cartoon … who hangs out with the most nefarious governments on the planet."
^Foresta, Mathew (April 29, 2022).
"Meet the Sneakiest Defenders of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine". The Daily Beast.
Archived from the original on September 2, 2023. Retrieved June 18, 2023. During a recent interview, Blumenthal denied The Grayzone receives any state funding through Russia or China saying, "Well, you can see we get a lot of support on Patreon, and anyone who supports us outside Patreon are like private friends of mine who are basically progressive Americans who support progressive media."