Consortium News

The Establishment Rather Hates Us

Actions in 2022 by NewsGuard and PayPal and inquiries by a British official proved that powerful establishment actors oppose Consortium News. Help us show them they are wrong.


PayPal headquarters in San Jose, Calif. (Wikipedia)

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
December 30, 2022

For Consortium News the year 2022 was marked by notable achievements, some of which caught the attention of the Establishment.

In March, three months after we began reporting on Russia’s intervention in the Ukrainian civil war, the rating agency NewsGuard wrote to accuse CN of publishing “false content” for reporting on the 2014 Kiev coup and the role of neo-Nazism in the country.

In May, PayPal permanently banned Consortium News from using its money transfer system. PayPal steadfastly refused to say why. But its user agreement prohibits spreading “misinformation,” and while information is our only trade, it was logical to conclude, given the hysteria surrounding the subject, that it objected to our Ukraine coverage.

In June, The GrayZone reported on leaked emails which showed that a British Foreign Office official had contacted Nina Jankowicz, who at the time was heading the Biden administration’s now disbanded Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Homeland Security. In an email, the official said he would look into CN‘s editor. He said Jankowicz told him she would “ask around” about Consortium News.

It is not clear who she asked, whether in or out of government. But Jankowicz told the official she thinks CN was not being funded, presumably by a foreign power such as Russia, but instead were just being “useful idiots.”

In 2020, the Canadian electronic intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) falsely accused Consortium News of being in the forefront of a Russian cyber attack.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said about his fiercest right-wing critics: “They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.” We welcome the Establishment’s hatred too. We also welcome all the support you can give us to help us continually beat them.



Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe