An update regarding a recent sponsored post: we got duped, it seems....
On 24th June, LFF published a sponsored post from a fairly new news/comment site called Peace Data.
Peace Data bills itself as “a global news organization,” writing: “Our goal is to shed light on the global issues and raise awareness about corruption, environmental crisis, abuse of power, armed conflicts, activism, and human rights.” It appears to be targeted at left-leaning readers.
We took the piece – “Money talks: Why the UK government refuses to condemn Turkey” – in good faith, after assessing the material to make sure neither the copy nor the organisation appeared to be inconsistent with LFF’s values.
On 1st September, various US news outlets reported that Facebook and Twitter had taken down Peace Data social media accounts, after “learning through a tip from the FBI that people formerly associated with the Russian Internet Research Agency – which created a number of influential Twitter and Facebook personas to inflame political tensions in the 2016 election – ran Peace Data and has taken down its known affiliated accounts.” Twitter said the organisation represented ‘Russian state actors’.
The journalist who wrote the Peace Data article we posted has, after being contacted by LFF, now retracted the piece. Commenting on the revelations regarding Peace Data being linked to Russian state actors, he added: “I was not aware of this until the news broke.”
Several outlets have reported how Peace Data recruited legitimate journalists in the US and UK without disclosing who ran the organisation.
We’ve kept up the original piece here in the interests of maintaining a public record.
We’ll be doing more checks before we take sponsored pieces in future. Apologies, and thanks for understanding.
The LFF Team.
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