Zero Hedge
Founders: Daniel Ivandjiiski, Tim Backshall, Colin Lokey
Owner: ABC Media Limited
Constitutes: Blog
Main focus: Financial system, Gold, Geopolitics, Independent media, Tesla, Elon Musk
Zero Hedge is a financial, underground-alternative, conservative media blog, which doesn't shrink from perspectives censored by the commercially-controlled media. It was included in the original 2016 PropOrNot list of 200 "Fake News" websites and has been consistently one of the most popular sites on that list. Zero Hedge bills itself as a whistleblower outlet, using the 'Tyler Durden' pseudonym to disguise sources and authors.[1]
Contents
Reporting
Zerohedge generally promotes Russian-favorable positions and the Russian worldview. It's not obvious unless viewed over longer periods of time. Foreign policy articles promote Russia as a stabilizing factor in world politics, America/NATO as aggressors (similar to Russia Today), leaving readers in the west with considerable discomfort about their governments foreign policy. Since it's early days, Zerohedge appears in decline as a cutting edge conspiracy source, getting more mainstream and less controversial, telling readers what is already known, repeating official conspiracy narratives with tantalizing headlines.
For a time, the site bias leaned towards mega-bear, constantly threatening the end of world, daily predicting an 'Armageddon' that never came to pass. It had a dismal record on stock market predictions as well. Zero Hedge has been a widow-maker in bad market calls since 2011, although they occasionally made a spectacular call that proved right, so one shouldn't simply dismiss all financial-news articles (Daniel Ivandjiiski was once barred by FINRA for insider trading along with Peter D. Kelly).[2]
Site leans "apolitical" and will attack any candidate or politician for corruption, but leans towards conservative-populism.
Attribution
Many of the Zero Hedge writers write under the pseudonym 'Tyler Durden'. Contributing editors offer a regular selection of articles to the site[3]. Several contributing editors, who formerly promoted and supported Donald Trump during the 2016 US election, daily debunking insane, over-the-top attacks from corporate media which all proved almost conveniently false, have now switched almost universally to promoting Progressive-Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard 2020 Campaign, with virtually zero vetting of her campaign to expose her hypocrisy, flip-flopping and ties to the Council on Foreign Relations, as they did for Trump in the 2016 Election cycle.
Often more can be learned, simply reading the comments section at the bottom of any article, than from the articles themselves. Regulars do a good job debunking poorly researched or overly biased articles, along with offering links to other interesting sources/sites. Since anyone may register to comment, the site has seen an influx of trolls, in recent years, possibly from intelligence agencies, along with bad actors promoting links to computer viruses. Site commentators do a good job identifying regular offenders.
September 11, 2001
- Full article: 9-11
- Full article: 9-11
On September 11, 2018, Zero Hedge posted an article by David Stolinsky which supported the 9/11 official narrative of the 19 hijackers that recommended that the US use a "size-14 boot stomp... [in the Middle East] to encourage our friends and frighten our enemies".[4]
Censorship
Christchurch Mass Shooting
Zero Hedge was censored in New Zealand after the Christchurch Mass Shooting. A few days earlier it had been censored by Facebook, a ban that was later termed "a mistake" and repealed.[5]
- Full article: 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak
- Full article: 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak
Zero Hedge was censored after suggesting that COVID-19 might not be entirely of natural origin.[6] Six Reasons Why Covid-19 Fails The Sniff Test commented that "the hysteria has a sort of Y2K vibe to it all."[7]
Source of Funding
ZeroHedge is owned by ABC Media Limited. In one lawsuit: Cornerstone Macro v Ivandjiiski, ABC Media was identified as a Bulgarian company which is listed on Bulgaria’s corporate registry as having been founded in 2011. ABC Media (АБЦ Медия) is a single member LLC, the sole proprietor is Krassimir Ivandjiiski (Красимир Иванджийски).[8]
Krassimir Ivandjiiski
(according to the information published by Seth Hettena in December 2019)
In 1974, Krassimir Ivandjiiski became a member of the International Organization of Journalists (an organization labeled as a front for SOVIET propaganda). In 1975, he was an international correspondent for the Rabotnichesko Delo newspaper. Rabotnichesko Delo (Bulgarian: Работническо дело, "Workers' Deed") was a leftist Bulgarian newspaper that was the media organ of the Bulgarian COMMUNIST Party's Central Committee[1] and was one of the People's Republic of Bulgaria's highest-circulation newspapers. The Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP; Bulgarian: Българска Комунистическа Партия (БКП), romanized: Bëlgarska Komunističeska Partija (BKP)) was the Communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1989 when the country ceased to be a socialist state. The Bulgarian Communist Party had dominated the Fatherland Front coalition that took power in 1944, late in World War II, after it led a coup against Bulgaria's tsarist regime in conjunction with the Red Army's crossing the border. It controlled its armed forces, the Bulgarian People's Army.... ...BCP was committed to Marxism-Leninism, an ideology consisted of the writings of the German philosopher Karl Marx and Lenin that was introduced in 1929 by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in which the industries in Bulgaria were nationalized and a planned economy was implemented. In the 1960s, the BCP announced some economic reforms, which allowed the free sale of production that exceeded planned amounts. After Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev took power in 1985, the BCP underwent political and economic liberalization which promptly liquidated the party and dissolved the Bulgarian People's Republic completely. After the end of the BCP, the party was renamed to the Bulgarian Socialist Party in 1990, which retained connections with Russia.
2020 CMS Update
The update of their website that happened during 2020, made some older articles unavailable.[9][10] Archived articles are still accessible but only with a paid subscription.
Documents sourced from Zero Hedge
References
- ↑ https://www.zerohedge.com/about
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20111207223921/http://www.finra.org/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2008/P116963
- ↑ https://www.zerohedge.com/contributing-editors
- ↑ https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-11/are-we-remembering-911-or-forgetting-it
- ↑ https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-19/after-blocking-zerohedge-and-others-nz-telcos-demand-big-tech-censorship-surge
- ↑ https://beforeitsnews.com/media/2020/02/coronavirus-censorship-entire-media-falsely-claiming-zerohedge-doxxed-scientist-by-simply-naming-him-as-paper-author-2509576.html
- ↑ https://www.zerohedge.com/health/six-reasons-why-covid-19-fails-sniff-test
- ↑ Seth Hettena - Zero Hedge, Russia, and the Business of Conspiracies - this article triggered a reply by a Bulgarian lawyer on behalf of Krassimir Ivandjiiski, who felt slandered by the information published about him.
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20201105004846/https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-17/nyc-deploying-500-law-enforcement-officials-response-serious-assault-incidents-and
- ↑ http://archive.today/2021.02.27-223413/https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-17/nyc-deploying-500-law-enforcement-officials-response-serious-assault-incidents-and