User:ImTheIP/Controversies involving The Canary

Controversies involving The Canary is a list of controversies involving the left-wing British news website The Canary.

Portland Communications
On June 30, 2016, The Canary published an article by Steve Topple titled "How a PR company manufactured the Labour coup – Part I" in which he stated that the PR agency Portland Communications had helped stage the ongoing coup against Jeremy Corbyn's leadership within the British Labour party. Topple alleged that Portland, which was setup in 2001 by Tim Allan, a former advisor to Tony Blair, had personal connections to the Blairite faction of the Labour party. One of the individuals that "stood out", according to Topple, was Kevin McKeever, Labour party activist, founder of political consultancy Lowick, and partner at Portland.

On Sunday, July 3, Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Britain's largest trade union, Unite the Union, and one of Corbyn's strongest allies, in an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr, referred to the attempted coup as a "political lynching of a decent man". He also suggested that the BBC should investigate Portland, who according to him was a "PR company with strong links to Tony Blair" involved in coup against Corbyn. Portland responded by tweeting "Len McCluskey's comments on #Marr. This is a ridiculous conspiracy theory and completely untrue. He should withdraw."

In a follow-up article by Topple published on July 5 and titled "Fresh revelations show how a Blairite PR company manufactured the Labour coup (Exclusive)" he wrote that McKeever had a meeting at the British trade union Unison's headquarters in London on June 28 which he claimed could have breached industry lobbying guidelines. In the days following the meeting, McKeever tweeted about how unions were allegedly preparing to "drop Corbyn". Topple inferred that the meeting was about influencing Unison to come out against Corbyn. Topple also reiterated his assessment from June 28: "To spell it out in layman’s terms, Portland Communications is a company organised, fronted and controlled by a plethora of apparatchiks of Tony Blair and the centre-right of Labour."

To support this assessment, Topple listed Portland's breakdown of its staff's political affiliations as follows: "two Liberal Democrats; nine had worked in the media for either the BBC/ITN/Sky; 11 Conservatives; 47 Labour party, including 21 who had worked for them under the Blair or Brown administrations; 50 appeared to have no political leanings at all."

On the same day that The Canary published Topple's follow-up article, The Guardian wrote that McKeever had received an alleged death threat which he posted a photo of on Facebook and Twitter. The threat read: "hello comrade we’ve watched you leave this building we’ve watched you on the strand your blood is the price of your treachery prepare to be coxed :-)"

"coxed" references the British Labour political Jo Cox who was murdered on June 16 by a far-right extremist with a history of psychiatric problems. Along with the photo, McKeever denied that he or his employer Portland were involved in the efforts to oust Corbyn. He also implied that the believed that the death threat was related to The Canary's reporting. In 2018, in a piece critical of The Canary, Adam Barnett also suggested that the death threat was the result of the website's reporting.

Carl David Goette-Luciak
On September 26, 2018, MintPress News published an article by Max Blumenthal about Carl David Goette-Luciak with the headline "How an American Anthropologist Tied to US Regime-Change Proxies Became the MSM’s Man in Nicaragua". The article was republished in The Canary on September 28 under the title "Investigation slams Guardian cooperation with novice reporter linked to US regime-change machine". In the article, Blumenthal charged Goette-Luciak with being a "novice reporter" that had published pieces "littered with falsehoods" and of promoting the views of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), a Nicaraguan party opposing President Daniel Ortega and funded by the United States. Blumenthal wrote that Goette-Luciak's social media profile revealed intimate ties to MRS leaders and that he in a podcast had described his own work as encouraging opposition to Ortega's party the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front.

In April 2018, protests broke out in Nicaragua after Ortega had announced a tax-hike. The protests led, according to Blumenthal, to a failed coup attempt and widespread violence. On September 7, Goette-Luciak and Houck published an article in The Guardian, quoting an MRS official describing the situation in the country: "“With 200 political prisoners and [new] murders every day, this strike is just one more sign that nothing is normal here in Nicaragua,” said Ana Margarita Vigil, a 40-year-old national director of the opposition Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), which has been stripped of its legal status."

Blumenthal claimed that this article was misleading because it didn't mention that most of the murder victims were Ortera's supporters. He further stated that MRS hasn't been outlawed - it merely received 1.3% of the popular vote and thus failed to reach the threshold required to run as a political party. Blumenthal also faulted Goette-Luciak for not reporting on violence committed by MRS supporters: "In a separate incident this June, Goette-Luciak appeared momentarily in a highly disturbing video filmed by 100% Noticias. He could be seen taking photos of a mob of opposition thugs in the act of kidnapping and beating an ageing Sandinista member they had found squatting on a local oligarch’s abandoned property. Oddly, Goette-Luciak published no photos of the incident and did not report on it."

On October 2, The Guardian reported that Goette-Luciak had been deported the day prior from Nicaragua, ostensibly for covering protests against Ortega. BuzzFeed News reporter Mark Di Stefano insinuated that Blumenthal's reporting contributed to Goette-Luciak's deportation, something Blumenthal denied in a tweet: "1. I wrote, “There is no evidence [CGDL] is an asset of the CIA” 2. Nicaraguan media was buzzing about his documented role as an opposition publicist for days before I published 3. No one disputes one fact I reported 4. CGDL is on a flight home right now:"

On October 4, Charles Davis in BuzzFeed News called Blumenthal's article a "lengthy hit piece". An email from Guardian editor Philip Inman and shared by Di Stefano also alleged that Blumenthal's reporting was responsible for Goette-Luciak's deportation: "It is clear that the main source of intimidation was The Canary news website, which named Goette-Luciak as an opposition stooge – an accusation that quickly led to his arrest and deportation."

On October 4, Blumenthal published a follow-up article in The Canarcy where he criticized BuzzFeed News and The Guardian for insinuating that his reporting was responsible for Goette-Luciak's deporation. The article also featured an interview with Wyatt Reed, a longtime friend and colleague of Goette-Luciak who said that there was a conflict of interest involved in their reporting. According to Reed, he was "slowly realizing" that he was "inhabiting the role of a foreign agent of imperialism in many ways" in Nicaragua. According to Blumenthal, Reed wrote a letter to The Guardian, the Washington Post, and the National Union of Journalists outlining his concerns about Goette-Luciak but they refused to publish it. Part of the letter read: "I must be extremely clear: in the six months we lived and worked together in Nicaragua we were both very open about our plan to use our friendships with Nicaraguan opposition figures to push for the end of the Sandinista government and create careers for ourselves as journalists or consultants in the process."

Following The Canary's articles about Goette-Luciak, the National Union of Journalists cancelled an event that would have featured the website's editor Kerry-Anne Mendoza.