Source: AFP
US far-right conspiracy website Gateway Pundit is filing for bankruptcy, its founder said Wednesday, as it fights a series of lawsuits alleging it promoted misinformation about the 2020 election.
Parent company TGP Communications is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Florida, founder Jim Hoft said in a note to readers, blaming “progressive liberal” lawsuits.
Launched as a blog in 2004, Gateway Pundit rose to prominence by spouting conspiracy theories about a range of topics, from mass shootings to Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Two poll workers in the southern state of Georgia — which Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020 — sued the website for falsely alleging they were involved in voter fraud.
In December, the same two poll workers won a separate $148 million defamation case against former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani for spreading similar falsehoods.
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Gateway Pundit is also facing a lawsuit in Colorado from a former employee of election technology company Dominion Voting Systems, alleging false voting fraud.
Last year, Dominion Voting Systems secured a $787.5 million settlement from Fox News after being sued over false claims that its machines changed votes.
Defamation lawsuits are increasingly becoming a tool used by citizens and pro-democracy groups in the United States to hold disinformation purveyors accountable.
Radio host Alex Jones, founder of the far-right website InfoWars, has filed for bankruptcy in 2022 after being ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in restitution for calling a 2012 mass shooting at an elementary school — which left 20 first graders dead elementary school and six adults. — a “hoax”.
But striking a defiant note, Hoft vowed to keep publishing even as Gateway Pundit comes under financial pressure from “radical left” campaigns that have driven away advertisers.
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“We do not expect this to change,” Hoff wrote in his note to readers.
He added that bankruptcy protection “is not an admission of guilt or blame,” but instead a way to reorganize and consolidate differences “when attacks are coming from all sides.”
Chapter 11 is a US mechanism that allows a company to restructure its debts under court supervision while continuing to operate.
According to US disinformation watchdog NewsGuard, Gateway Pundit “regularly distorts information” and spreads baseless conspiracies.
It consistently ranks in the top 20 most popular right-wing websites, according to Righting, a newsletter that compiles data from analytics firm Comscore.
The site’s account on X, formerly Twitter, has nearly 740,000 followers.
But traffic to a number of conservative pro-Trump websites has plummeted in recent months, in part because social media platforms like Facebook downgrade the media’s articles.
Unique visitors to Gateway Pundit plunged about 62% in February compared to the same month last year, according to Righting, apparently exacerbating its financial woes.
Source: AFP
