The Gateway Pundit is known as a source of viral falsehoods and hoaxes.
[9][36][37] It has been described by the
Harvard Journal of Law & Technology as one of the websites that "primarily propagate
fake news",
[11] by
Newsweek as a
fake news website,
[38] and by
CNN as a website "prone to peddling
conspiracy theories".
[39] In August 2019, journalism professors Erik P. Bucy and John E. Newhagen observed that "The most aggressive fake news sites and associated
YouTube channels, such as
InfoWars,
The Gateway Pundit, and
Daily Stormer, are routinely sued by victims of these published reports for
libel and
defamation."
[10] As a result of a number of lawsuits against
The Gateway Pundit over its false stories, it was reported in March 2018 that Jim Hoft had told his writers to be more careful: "I don't want any more lawsuits so we have to be really careful with what we put up."
[40] Hoft stated that he believes the lawsuits "are part of a multi-pronged effort to attack media outlets on the right."
[40]
In 2019,
The Gateway Pundit, along with
One America News Network and
The Daily Caller, were deprecated by the
Wikipedia community for publishing false information.
[41]
2016 election
The Gateway Pundit promoted false rumors about
voter fraud and
Hillary Clinton's health.
[30][42][43][44] Specifically, rumors of Hillary Clinton's poor health were disseminated via
The Gateway Pundit's articles entitled, "Breaking: 71% of Doctors Say Hillary Health Concerns Serious, Possibly Disqualifying!" and "Wow! Did Hillary Clinton Just Suffer a Seizure on Camera?"
[42][44] Regarding voter fraud,
The Gateway Pundit published an unsubstantiated report during the 2016 presidential election from the
Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm, claiming that Republicans had accused
Broward County, Florida officials of tampering with
mail-in ballots.
[45]
Misidentifying shooters and terrorists
The Gateway Pundit has a record of misidentifying perpetrators of shootings and terror attacks.
[46]
In October 2017,
The Gateway Pundit published an article falsely implicating an innocent person as the shooter in the
2017 Las Vegas shooting. The article was promoted by
Google as a "top story" for searches for his name.
[47] Gateway Pundit asserted that
New York Times reporter
Rukmini Callimachi had reported that
ISIS may have evidence that it was behind the shooting, but Callimachi denied that she had ever made such an assertion.
[48]
Shortly after the 2017
white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, in which a person
drove a vehicle into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one,
The Gateway Pundit falsely identified a young man from Michigan as the driver.
[49] After the misidentification took place, the family went into hiding after receiving several death threats.
[50][51] Together with his father, the Michigan man filed a defamation lawsuit against the publication and other related parties.
[49]
The Gateway Pundit promoted conspiracy theories about
Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
[52] In February 2018,
The Gateway Pundit published an article erroneously stating that school shooter
Nikolas Cruz was a registered Democrat, citing a registered Broward County voter with a similar name. The website later corrected its mistake.
[53][54] Later that month,
Gateway Pundit was one of a number of far-right websites that pushed the claim that at least one of the teenage survivors of Stoneman Douglas High School shooting was a
deep state pawn,
[55] alleging that
David Hogg's
gun control activism was being coached by his retired
FBI agent father.
[56]
In July 2018,
Gateway Pundit falsely claimed that a man arrested with bomb-making equipment and illegal weapons had been a "leftist
antifa terrorist". The individual in question was however a conservative whose Facebook profile was littered with pro-
Second Amendment memes.
[57]
In August 2018,
Gateway Pundit falsely identified a
Reddit user as the perpetrator of the
Jacksonville Landing shooting.
[58]
Other
In December 2017,
The Gateway Pundit published a Reddit post as evidence that Democratic activists were committing voter fraud in the
2017 Alabama Senate special election.
[59] The redditor behind the post later said that the post was intended "as an obvious troll."
[59] When asked by
The Washington Post, the writer of the
Gateway Pundit post declined to say whether he had contacted the redditor to verify the information; later the
Gateway Pundit story contained an update at the bottom: "Liberals say these are fake Reddit posts(?) Regardless, the posts are still up on Reddit and the posters are still encouraging Democrats to cheat."
[59] Also in December 2017,
Gateway Pundit published a story falsely saying that
Facebook had taken down a previous
Gateway Pundit story about the Alabama election, when in fact a Facebook algorithm had made it less prevalent after it had been flagged as fake news.
[60]
In April 2018,
The Gateway Pundit falsely claimed in a headline that two prominent African-American conservative video bloggers –
Diamond and Silk – had been censored by Facebook.
[61]
In September 2018, after psychology professor
Christine Blasey Ford alleged that
U.S. Supreme Court nominee
Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when they were teenagers,
The Gateway Pundit published an article
[62] erroneously claiming that Kavanaugh's mother, a district court judge in Maryland, had once ruled in a foreclosure case against Dr. Ford's parents, creating what
The Gateway Pundit called "bad blood" between the two families.
[63] In an update,
The Gateway Pundit noted, "CBS News reports the case was settled amicably and the Blaseys kept their house."
[63]
On October 30, 2018,
NBC News and
The Atlantic published articles detailing a scheme to falsely accuse
Robert Mueller of sexual misconduct in 1974. The articles reported involvement by
Jack Burkman and
Jacob Wohl, the latter a writer for
Gateway Pundit. Hours after these reports,
Gateway Pundit published on its site "exclusive documents" about a "very credible witness" to support the accusations against Mueller. Each document had in its header the phrase "International Private Intelligence," the business slogan of Surefire Intelligence, a firm created by Wohl. The site removed the documents later that day, stating they were investigating the matter, as well as "serious allegations against Jacob Wohl."
[38] The following day,
Gateway Pundit's owner Jim Hoft retweeted Wohl's comment suggesting Mueller's office was actually behind the scheme. Mueller's office had days earlier referred the scheme to the FBI. Burkman and Wohl convened a press conference outside Washington on November 1, ostensibly to present a woman who they said signed an affidavit, which
Gateway Pundit had published, accusing Mueller of raping her in a New York hotel room in 2010 — on a date he was contemporaneously reported by
The Washington Post to be serving jury duty in Washington.
[64] The men accused Mueller's office of "leaking" the eight year-old
Post story to discredit their allegations. The purported accuser, a Carolyne Cass, did not appear at the press conference, with the men asserting she had panicked in fear of her life and taken a flight to another location. Soon after the press conference, Hoft announced that Gateway Pundit had "suspended our relationship" with Wohl.
[65][66][67][68]
In November 2020,
The Gateway Pundit erroneously stated that a software glitch during the
2020 United States Presidential Election led to 10,000 votes in
Rock County, Wisconsin, being "moved" from incumbent president
Donald Trump to his opponent,
Joe Biden; the article was then promoted by
Eric Trump, President Trump's son and executive vice president of the
Trump Organization. The article was disputed by the
Associated Press, which stated that the supposed discrepancy was caused by a technical error in AP's reporting of results obtained from Rock County's election website, an error that was resolved within minutes and did not pertain to the counting of actual ballots. Rock County clerk Lisa Tollefson stated that
The Gateway Pundit reported incorrect information, and that the county stood by the final tally. The
Wisconsin Elections Commission later added: "The AP’s error in no way reflects any problem with how Rock County counted or posted unofficial results. The WEC has confirmed with Rock County that their unofficial results reporting was always accurate. [...] These errors have nothing to do with Wisconsin’s official results, which are triple checked at the municipal, county and state levels before they are certified."
[69][70][71]
In December 2020, Gateway Pundit falsely claimed that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's brother "Ron" worked for a Chinese tech firm. Raffensperger's brother's name was not Ron and he did not work for a Chinese company.
[72]
The Gateway Pundit - Wikipedia