Introduction
Misinformation online is a very real threat. It is well-documented that misinformation and the proliferation of fake news assisted in the victory of President Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, that fake news was a serious adversary during the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, and continues to be an imposing threat throughout the early days of the Biden administration and during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, misinformation is not limited to purely foreign powers such as Russia, China, or Iran, with domestic forces having the ability to produce fake news that misleads and undermines political processes. In many cases, they are more successful and destructive than foreign attacks. One site which frequently produces misinformation online, yet is not as well-known as InfoWars or Zero Hedge, is The Free Thought Project (TFTP).
TFTP is a popular, yet small, website. The site’s Twitter and Facebook pages has roughly 5,000 followers and over 100,000 followers respectively.
The founder and editor-in-chief of the site, a man by the name of Matt Agorist, claims his site receives, “six to 15 million unique views a month”. According to SimilarWeb, however, the site gained roughly 298,000 views from December 2020 to May 2021.
However, the site has spread a variety of claims that are very questionable and engages in practices that are highly suspicious, making them seem like something far less than a journalistic agency, which they claim to be. These questionable claims include the engagement of conspiracy theories revolving around Seth Rich, 9/11, Chemtrails, and many more. These suspicious practices mentioned include plagiarism in the form of stealing other’s work and using other’s work without proper crediting, making simple grammatical errors that look unprofessional, making factual errors that would be cleared up by the most basic forms of investigation, in addition to having a very odd revenue scheme. This work hopes to showcase just how TFTP has gone about endorsing these controversial and baseless views while not at all holding themselves up to a journalistic standard despite criticizing the mainstream media.
TFTP should be judged as a journalistic entity. Some may disagree with this while saying, “They’re a news aggregate, not a news reporting site,” yet not once in TFTP’s “About us” page, “Terms & Conditions” page nor elsewhere on the site does TFTP identify themselves as a news aggregate. Their editor-in-chief identifies himself as a journalist in addition to being an activist, stating, “I like to think of journalism as activism…I think if you’re a journalist, you’re an activist[sic]”.
This is an interesting take on journalism, as most would agree it is difficult to combine the two as journalism is supposed to be unbiased and strictly report what is said with minimal inflection of personal views or opinions whereas activism is inherently biased towards a specific viewpoint. I’m not saying that activism is wrong for holding bias, but there is a dichotomy that makes blending the two nearly impossible. Michael Blanding, an investigative journalist from Boston, wrote an article for Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism discussing this exact issue of the merging between journalism and activism. Blanding seems to take the viewpoint that journalism must remain unbiased and not verge into advocacy, stating, “openness extends to hearing the story of the police when writing about a protest, or hearing the story of an accused rapist when reporting on sexual assault, something most activists would never trouble themselves with”. Blanding’s interview with Samhita Mukhopadhyay, the executive editor of Teen Vogue, further illuminates this point as she says, “[journalism] does require some skill in recognizing other people’s points of view and being able to hear someone’s story…We all know none of these stories are black and white. Despite what your opinion is, if you are ruled by your opinion, that is not real reporting”.
However, what is important to note is that journalism has a strict code of ethics that it adheres to and is intended to be the standard for any and every journalist everywhere. One of the best and most concise descriptions of this code of ethics is in the Society of Professional Journalists, one of the oldest professional journalist associations in the United States. In their code, they describe four principles that must be maintained, these being to Seek Truth and Report It, Minimize Harm, Act Independently, and Be Accountable and Transparent. Within these areas are subsections, each describing what journalists should and should not do, some of these being;
Abide by the same high standards they expect of others.
Avoid pandering to lucid curiosity, even if others do so.
Never plagiarize. Always attribute.
Never deliberately distort facts or context.
Provide context.
Gather, update and correct information throughout the life of a news story.
Label advocacy and commentary.
Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the two.
Remember that neither speed nor format excuses inaccuracy.
Avoid stereotyping.
Their founder has also listed a challenge, saying, “Call us out. If you think we’re fake, try to prove that. They’re not going to be able to, which is why we’re not fake news”. It is my goal to prove that TFTP does not abide by these rules nor has any respect for the journalistic medium (despite their claim to be journalists and bring about fairness) in addition to proving that they are indeed fake news.
Now that that is clear, onto the analysis.
TFTP: A History
The Free Thought Project is a website that has the goal of being, “a hub for Free Thinking conversations about the promotion of liberty and the daunting task of government accountability… [it is our mission] to foster the creation and expansion of liberty minded solutions to modern day tyrannical oppression [and] by providing a beacon of truth amongst all the lies”. Basically, it seems to be about documenting government and state corruption, promoting accountability, and providing stories that often go unreported. The site was founded by Matt Agorist and Jason Bassler who are listed on the About page as being longtime activists turned journalists. One of the first posts made was by Agorist in 2012 (however, he would not post again for and focused on police officers being arrested in a child porn case. However, other articles didn’t focus on policing or politics, yet seemed to be very much along the lines of ads one sees advertised on various pages on the internet;
In October of 2013, the site was officially codified as a Limited Liability Company. The site gained a serious amount of viewers due to their content which was seen as thumbing their nose to the mainstream media, being skeptical of big government, documenting instances of public and police corruption, and overall attracting a certain base of supporters that were more anti-government.
The site’s articles had (and still has) sensationalized headlines and extremely descriptive commentary (e.g., equating police officers and National Guardsmen to Nazis or the Gestapo being a prevalent one). A great amount of these articles too are very similar to clickbait tactics (meaning, “a headline which tempts the reader to click on the story [and often are] sensationalized, turn out to be adverts, or are simply misleading”) and can be seen in the following headlines;
With these examples, one is able to see that they are eye-catching, with the average person desiring to watch that video and see how the last guy does not put blind trust into authority, to read about what happened with the world’s dumbest cop, to see what the site says about Anarchists, or to see Trump’s meltdown. With these kind of tactics, it is quite obvious that they are engaging in clickbait methods (of the sensationalized variety) designed to further improve traffic to the site and gain more followers of a certain ideology.
The site’s usage of poorly done Photoshop (this article linked is also quite interesting as they try to claim that the mainstream media did not report at all about the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, a blatant lie as CNN covered the events throughout the day) and juxtaposition made to confuse and follow a very specific line of thought is also highly concerning and something that would be rare to find on a legitimate news agency.
Nonetheless, the site grew to a great degree, apparently attracting 3.1 million viewers on Facebook.
In October of 2018, however, Facebook, “removed 559 Pages and 251 accounts that broke the social network’s rules against spam and “coordinated inauthentic behavior” while stating, “They [the sites in question] post clickbait posts on these Pages to drive people to websites that are entirely separate from Facebook and seem legitimate, but are actually ad farms…these networks increasingly use sensational political content – regardless of its political slant – to build an audience and drive traffic to their websites, earning money for every visitor to the site” in addition to noting that these opinionated news stories are unintelligible from appropriate political discourse. The Free Thought Project was one of these pages, becoming banned on both Facebook and Twitter. Naturally, a certain amount of outrage was created in response to this, with Free Thought discussing the bans on their own site.
Since then, TFTP has rebranded themselves on Facebook and Twitter (taking on the name of The Free Thought Project 4.0 and The Free Thought Project 2.0 respectively). Despite their Facebook ban, the site is still going strong and is able to pump out numerous articles a day.
However, is what TFTP doing factually inaccurate? After all, they may be clickbait, but are they getting items factually incorrect?
TFTP and the Facts
First, let’s examine TFTP’s factual reporting and their track record for reporting legitimate content. After a cursory search online, it is easy to find many times when TFTP engaged in reporting practices that were unsound, misleading, or completely and wholly inaccurate.
Snopes, a fact-checking organization out of Tacoma, Washington and noted for its ability to unbiasedly research political statements, have run a series of articles focusing on the organization and found them to be seriously misstating the facts of a given situation multiple times.
They have found the website made:
A baseless claim involving Congress having passed legislation allowing warrantless searches of home
Falsely alleged that Illinois had made it a felony for citizens to record police officers
Found an article that a man was charged with DUI due to drinking too much coffee was blatantly false
And that an article stating Mississippi allowed certain congregants of churches to kill above the law was a clever mixing of the truth
Other articles discussed equally horrendous instances of government overreach or inaction or a greedy mainstream media. All of these were found by Snopes to have been either wholly dishonest or containing some facts while stretching the truth.
PolitiFact, another well-respected fact-checking organization, has also run two articles on the Free Thought Project, finding these two other examples to be either False or Mostly False. Another website (one not specializing in fact-checking, but rather technology) wrote an article discussing how TFTP fell for a hoax video involving iPhone hacking and instituted a baseless theory in regards to the FBI and U.S. Intelligence Community.
In my own investigation of the site, I have found that TFTP has engaged in many unsuitable journalistic practices and violated many tenets of the journalism profession. In what I found very shocking, the Free Thought Project has engaged in plagiarism of the highest order (the taking of someone else’s work and attributing it to one’s own self).
In a 05 February 2020 article, labeled an “Exclusive”, TFTP reported a story in Springfield, MO of a woman named Angela Goodwin who was the victim of an incident in which Springfield officers entered her home and, in a video recording which Goodwin later posted to Facebook, searched her home and engaged in what is very rough handling of her cat; from the article, “The Free Thought Project spoke to the woman who took the video who explained how the behavior from these officers made her sick to her stomach. “I was sick to my stomach, it made me sick,” said Goodwin. “I mean, I understood to a point they have to go through stuff,” Goodwin said, “But, once I actually watched the video… that’s not what they were doing”.
Certainly a harrowing story and ordeal, however, the entire article is plagiarized from a year old article made by KYTV 3, an NBC affiliate based out of Springfield, MO. Below are two screenshots from both articles, with the TFTP being first and the KYTV 3 article being second. I will leave it up to the reader to determine if the content is plagiarized or not.
It is awfully convenient that Goodwin happened to say exactly the same thing she said to KYTV 3 when she was interviewed by TFTP more than a year later. There are also texts that TFTP attributes to her that are not present in the KYTV 3 article and it is unknown how TFTP gained access to this. The article does mention Goodwin’s Facebook page (which they do not provide a link to) so it is possible that they took what she had written there and applied it to the post. Either that or TFTP wholesale invented text and attributed it to her. Regardless, the fact that TFTP does not link to the KYTV 3 article when it is literally the only other site to discuss this incident is also extremely poor on their part and, arguably, is a deliberate attempt to cover their devious and duplicitous nature.
Not only does this article cast doubt on the rest of the site’s credibility, but it is quite simply unfair to KYTV 3 which actually did report on this incident and were the ones who actually interviewed the woman.
As another example, in a 04 March 2020 article written by Matt Agorist, he documents the case of Alexandra Hill in Texas, a young girl who was removed from her parents due to marijuana usage and one of the parent’s history of seizures and was placed into foster care before dying of subdural hemorrhaging at the hands of her foster caretakers, one of whom was a recovering drug user. He later writes, “Small [the foster mother who murdered Hill] would eventually be arrested and tried for murder. On Tuesday, according to KLFY, she was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Alexandria Hill”.
First, one would assume that, being this was written Wednesday, March 4, that Small was sentenced Tuesday, March 3; in reality, she was sentenced 01 November of 2014 and died in prison in December of 2016. TFTP also includes a dead link in their article, and, upon trying to find such an article from KLFY on the Small case, I was unable to find a single article mentioning Small or Hill on KLFY.
Also, this is important to note about the article, Agorist mentions in the headline and in the text that the marijuana was medical noting, “Joshua Hill [the father] told a case worker…he would smoke marijuana…to treat his medical condition. The case worker couldn’t have cared less that the marijuana helped stave off seizures”.
However, as Mother Jones, BuzzFeedNews, FOX6, The Houston Press, The Austin Statesman, and Huffington Post all reported, the mother had seizures, not the father, and in none of these articles was it ever mentioned that the father took marijuana for medicinal purposes. Again, not only did TFTP give factually inaccurate information on Small’s conviction, but they deliberately twisted what actually occurred so that the story would get more clicks and attention.
As is the case with a lot of TFTP articles, much of the article’s basis came from The Houston Press before being copied and pasted with slight changes to the article’s content to make it more inflammatory or to make it seem as not being plagiarized. Interestingly, this tactic was also utilized by Russian hackers subcontracted by Russian intelligence during the 2014 Ukrainian revolution; in one hacker’s recollections to a journalist, “he needed to rewrite twenty articles a day, averaging eight hundred words each…The goal was to rewrite articles that could get to the top of Google and Yandex, so the website needed to contain unique text. Social media was vital to the job, as the articles had to be promoted on platforms where they could gain the most traffic…the facts and central themes of the article would remain unchanged with just key chunks of text rewritten…The changes weren’t, he thought, significant. He needed to change words like “terrorist” and “separatist” into “militia” and instead of “Ukrainian army” write “national guard” or “volunteer battalions” [words that in Eastern Europe most connote with right-wing]”. The similarities between articles like what TFTP often produces and what Russian hacker groups have done is astounding.
In another article written by Agorist and published on 10 August 2019, he writes, “Muskegon police officer Charles Anderson has been placed on paid vacation and not fired after racist KKK memorabilia was discovered in his home. The department assures the public that they are investigating the allegations”. Now, in terms of being a good journalist, one of the key tenants is to update articles and correct information. On 12 September 2019, over a month later, NBC News reported that the officer was terminated from the department. Despite this, there is no update to the article nor is there another article making known this development to the site’s readers. Because of this, it is reasonable that many readers would presume that the officer has not been fired or otherwise disciplined for the actions committed. By not following up or creating a new article detailing this development, Agorist is not exactly acting in the best interest of his reader base.
In this August 2020 article too, they say, “The Free Thought Project spoke to one of Saylor’s former high school classmates who says he’s appalled by the decision of the Frederick Police Department to hire Rochford given his past. “This hiring was equivalent to spitting in the face of the public. It illuminates the incestuous relationship between the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office and the Frederick Police Department and is totally unacceptable,” Saylor’s former classmate, Bryan Williams said”. They claim they interview the man, yet this quoting from Williams is verbatim from a public Facebook post, not an individual, social media message from Williams to TFTP. The Facebook also post does not identify himself as a friend of Saylor’s either, with the account having extremely little information on the person itself (the only real available information is that Wiliams is a friend of Jason Bassler).
In another July 2020 article, the site details that a man was shot “at least twelve times” at a Wal-Mart by an off-duty officer who, “was nearby and heard a call on his radio about a potential shoplifting at the Wal-Mart [and] decided to get involved”. However, as local news sources like KOCO, KFOR, News9, KOCO again, and KOCO a final time reported before TFTP got ahold of the story, the officer was off-duty, but was working security for the store and was not returning home from a shift. Nor was the person treated for multiple gunshot wounds, with eleven gunshots being fired and only one round striking the man. This, in particular the fact about the officer working off-duty security for the store, is extremely distorted and portrays a much different picture, primarily by just creating evidence out of thin air.
In another another July 2020 article, TFTP says a man who was, “test riding a bike through the store while playing some music and telling random strangers he hopes they have a great day and complimenting them” was Tasered and arrested, yet the man in question was apparently (as detailed by WFMZ and Newsweek) “weaving back and forth through the store’s aisles on the bicycle, playing loud music, and yelling profanities at other shoppers, according to the district attorney, who said that the suspect was told multiple times by the store manager to leave, but he refused”. The article tries to make the case that the man was test riding the bike and being courteous, aligning this with some eyewitnesses, yet the man’s own statements at a legal hearing paints a much different story in line with the store manager’s description.
By listening more to one story over another, TFTP’s bias here is very evident and, in this case, poor to the reader to do as journalism should not be taking a side in cases like these.
Another key aspect of TFTP’s reporting is a focus on anti-government news. While TFTP often documents this content in the form of law enforcement (and occasionally military), there is a surprising amount of content that focuses on widely debunked conspiracies, the specific ones reported on being more prolific in right-wing circles. As an example of the type of conspiracies promulgated, here is a short list;
It’s Been 51 Years, And Most Don’t Know The FBI & Police Admitted Their Role In The Assassination of Dr. King (article claims that the FBI and Memphis PD admitted to assassinating King, but the only evidence provided is that of the 1999 result of a civil trial (which has been regarded by various authorities as being improperly conducted) and the fact that the FBI admitted to sending King a letter insinuating that he kill himself, committing a Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy; as well, the article was written 04 April 2017, however, subtracting 51 years from 2017 gets you to 1966 and King was assassinated 04 April 1968, not 1966. If someone is making an argument that the assassination was a conspiracy, then one should have a full and complete understanding of the subject matter, which the author obviously does not have)
Media Remains Silent On Sen. McCain’s KKK Ancestry And How He Put Neo-Nazis In Power In Ukraine (the article notes that McCain’s great-great-grandfather served under Nathan Bedford Forrest, with the headline manipulating the reader into believing that one of McCain’s ancestors was a legitimate Klan member and then goes into discussing McCain’s support for Ukrainian protestors who are against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Ukrainian president’s decision to strengthen ties with the Russians)
Documents Reveals Two US Soldiers Overheard Plot To Kill JFK – And Were Committed After Reporting It (the article quotes two CIA documents, neither of which provide evidence that the men were committed to mental institutions after their claims nor do they provide any other evidence for such a claim; one of the sources, the one discussing Alex des Fonatines for Time-Life and his allegation that said Dinkin was talking about the JFK assassination also notes, “des Fontaines thought he recalled he had heard Dinkin say something like that also and although he did not really believe that Dinkin had grounds for his statement when he made them”. As well, even though the article claims that these documents were released in the Nov. 2017 and Apr. 2018 document release, the source discussing Dinkin was uploaded to the Mary Ferrell Foundation on 25 November 1998)
A Year Ago Today, Seth Rich Was Murdered & His Death Is Still Being Covered Up (the article alleges first that Seth Rich was murdered for leaking the contents of John Podesta’s email and much of the DNC files given to WikiLeaks by Russian intelligence without providing any new evidence beyond an “investigation” conducted by an agency driven by Jack Burkman)
As War Drums Beat For Iran, Remember, Lies And Propaganda Started Nearly Every War In US History (the article alleges that Roosevelt and his administration received knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack, yet did not attempt to stop the attack. A common theory, there is no historical evidence to back up this claim and many historians and journalists have covered the theory, proving it to be false and without the evidence necessary to back it up; it is also worth pointing out that the article claims that World War I began due to the Lusitania sinking while neglecting the Zimmerman Telegram and claims that the U.S. entered the conflict in 1915, when they actually entered in 1917; the article also claims that Hermann Göering was the Nazi Party’s propagandist (correctly attributed a quote) when they actually are referring to Joseph Goebbels)
Another area of importance is who a journalist aligns oneself with. Obviously, if a journalist collects sources only from the U.S. government or from the state, or if a journalist collects information from only counter protestors and activist groups, then their reporting will be slanted and may not be fully accurate, showing both sides of the story, as well as indicating how one might be thinking politically and otherwise.
With Agorist and TFTP, there have been many partnerships made between him and his site with others that are extremely questionable for their own promulgation of conspiracy theories, poor fact checking record, lazy reporting and editing. An author called “The Free Thought Project” is the primary source for these articles which come from such notorious organizations like:
ZeroHedge (A prominent fake news outlet of the right-wing variety, they have promulgated many political conspiracies, COVID misinformation, and engaged in other odd reporting and journalistic behaviors. They have been previously analyzed here)
Strategic Culture Foundation (A little-known news outlet, the organization has garnered significant attention for their ties to Russia. The U.S. State Department, in August of 2020, identified the originally Russian language journal as being a website “directed by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and closely affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs” while also playing a key role in “[attracting] authors who are Western fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists, giving them a broader platform and obscuring the Russian origins of the journal”. The affiliation to Russia to the SCF has been confirmed by various agencies like GIOR and ESCTF. Among the contributors to the site are Pepe Escobar, Paul Craig Roberts, and Phillip Giraldi, authors who have previously been discussed in earlier analyses. In April of 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control identified the Strategic Culture Foundation for attempting “to influence or interfere with the U.S. elections and undermine public confidence in the election process…[by covertly influencing] U.S. voters and spread misinformation about U.S. political candidates and U.S. election processes and institutions”)
LewRockwell.com (An Anarcho-Capitalist website run by the founder and chairman of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, the site has pushed a great many unfounded and evidence lacking theories. The site has published works arguing vaccines cause autism, questioned the link between HIV/AIDS, claimed global warming is a fraud, and that the theory of relatively is fake. The site has also been found to misinform on two separate occasions)
InfoWars (A very well-known news outlet, Infowars (abbreviated as IW on some TFTP articles) has promulgated many conspiracy theories, the site being the main mouthpiece used by the infamous Alex Jones. On this site, he has alleged that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, has “[denied the moon landings and] believes the government acted as a guiding hand for the September 11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing, [and] buys into the New World Order”. In general, he is a rather run of the mill conspiracy theorist, yet has an extreme reach in domestic politics. Persons who have worked for Jones and IW have mentioned how many of his views are not based in any form of rational thought beyond bias or money being the sole motivator for his views. In court transcripts, Jones “agreed with his lawyer’s statements…[that his] most provocative rants may be “performance art” or “political satire””. Jones is also someone whom TFTP is unashamed to be associated with, with Bassler discussing Jones virtually as a role model in an interview)
Tenth Amendment Center (A lesser known news outlet, the Tenth Amendment Center publishes a significant amount of content on the 10th Amendment of the Constitution which “states that powers not explicitly given to the federal government are reserved to the states”; the site in general argues for the legal theory of Nullification, the belief “that a state has the right to nullify or invalidate, any federal law which that state has deemed unconstitutional with respect to the United States Constitution (as opposed to the state’s own constitution)” which, “has never been legally upheld by federal courts”. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the site’s founder, Michael Boldin, has used the site to “act against segregation, discrimination and other social ills” in addition to being heavily involved in neo-Confederate, antigovernment views)
The Mind Unleashed (A very well-known organization, they have engaged in practically every kind of conspiracy theory known to man, including alleging that Cannabis can cure cancer and Autism, that UFOs and Aliens exist and are being hidden by the government, that chemtrails are harmful, that GMOs are harmful, and that vaccines are harmful. The site has had multiple fact checks by such news outlets and independent organizations like USAToday and Snopes)
It must also be noted, however, that this author does also reprint articles from credible news agencies such as CommonDreams, Courthouse News Service, and ProPublica.
What is apparent through these affiliations is the site’s political bias and Matt Agorist’s own personal bias, this being aligned more to a Conservative/Right-Libertarian thought process. Many of the articles written and posted by Agorist repeat and build on some of the conspiracy theories that are present in current and past right-wing circles. He himself has endorsed many conspiracies and talking points that revolve around the right-wing.
An article titled, “Watch: Julian Assange Suggests Murdered DNC Staffer Seth Rich, Was Source For WikiLeaks,” in which Agorist writes, “As Hilary Clinton’s campaign progresses, so does the trail of dead bodies left in her wake. And now…we are finding out that a murder last month of DNC staffer Seth Rich is also tied to Hilary Clinton” with the article continuing discussing the Assange interview in which he suggests that Rich was the leak (this being convenient for Assange to do as it throws off the fact that the Russian government gave him this information as the CIA, FBI, and NSA all believed in their report) before ending his article with, “While Clinton’s control of the mainstream press keeps these ominous details from the public, the suspicious deaths are undeniable. What they show us is that it is indeed dangerous to portray Clinton in a negative light”. It’s pretty obvious that the author has a very strong, anti-Clinton vibe as they’re using deaths that are otherwise innocuous with no outright suggestion of foul play and taking the words of a very unreliable source to justify their argument.
There are also many, many other articles on Clinton which are incredibly biting and are very much anti-Clinton.
As another example, in one article, Agorist plays on one of the largest right-wing conspiracies of the 1990’s, the Waco Siege with the headline stating, “Never Forget: The US Gov’t Carried Out The Largest Church Massacre – 26 Years Ago, In Texas”. First, the article was written on 08 November 2017; it’s a known fact that the Waco Siege began on 28 February 1993 and ended 19 April 1993, which would make 2017 be 24 years since the siege.
So even with the most basic facts and utilizing extremely basic math, Agorist still gets essential information that is not debatable wrong. What is more interesting is at one point, he writes, “In 1992, Child Protective Services (CPS) was called in to investigate the accusations. After a thorough investigation, CPS concluded no one was being held at the compound against their will, nor any child abuse, and the federal prosecutor, who reviewed the report, saw no reason to prosecute Koresh”.
The next sentence and paragraphs then make it seem like the FBI (which only became truly involved in the operation once the ATF had raided the compound on 28 February 1993) then continued on investigating the group while discarding that evidence; later in the article however, Agorist notes, “Even though it was later determined Koresh had, indeed, molested children, and was by all intents and purposes a pedophile of the worst kind…”, which is something that should have been included immediately after the sentence above, not next to a bolded sentence where it might not get looked at. In addition to other problems with the article (such as ignoring audio transcripts from FBI bugs planted in the compound which seem to show Davidians pouring oil, and completely ignoring the Danforth Report, which showed that the pyrotechnic tear gas rounds fired did not start the fire and had testimony from surviving Davidians saying they did start the fire), the biggest problem is in the headline in which Agorist cannot seem to do simple math nor remember the most basic facts.
There are multiple examples of TFTP getting important dates wrong and being unable to do the most basic math. Below are a series of examples, from articles written by both Matt Agorist and Claire Bernish.
In a 21 August 2017 article on Ruby Ridge, titled, “27 Years Ago Today The Federal Govt Changed Its Rules To Launch A Sniper Attack On Off-Grid Family,” the writer discusses the Ruby Ridge standoff that occurred in Northern Idaho. First, 2017 minus 27 equals 1990, and the incident occurred at Ruby Ridge in 1992, so a pretty big mistake for something that, again, should be well understood by someone writing an article on the event.
In a 21 February 2017 article, Agorist discusses his own theory that the government assassinated Malcolm X in an article titled, “On The 54th Anniversary Of His Murder, Watch Malcolm X Prophesize Today’s Police State”. Again, he does not seem to have a strong grasp of the content as 2017 minus 54 would get one 1963; Malcolm X (as it says in literally the first paragraph) was assassinated 21 February 1965.
In a 16 March 2017 article titled, “50 Years Ago Today, The US Slaughtered 500 Unarmed Men, Women, & Children,” Bernish discusses the My Lai massacre. Now, 2017 minus 50 gets one to 1967; the My Lai massacre, unequivocally occurred on 16 March 1968.
Bernish also wrote another article on My Lai on the same date in 2018, the headline of this one reading, “Never Forget, 52 Years Ago The US Slaughtered 500 Unarmed Men, Women, and Children”.
Again, Bernish makes the same mistakes.
First, 2018 minus 52 equals 1966. I find it very odd that Bernish, having written an article about this exactly one-year prior makes such a big mistake in getting the number wrong; logically, I would expect her next article on this event to be fifty-one years, not fifty-two. So, it could be reasoned that she does not do any research at all when reporting on events.
Second, what is also interesting is that Bernish’s 2018 article on My Lai is, word-for-word, the exact same as her 2017 article, with no credit being given to her previous article. In the eyes of many English professors, scholars, and accredited universities, Bernish has just committed the act of self-plagiarism.
This is also not the only time Bernish has done this as multiple articles of hers’ are the same article word for word, yet show no indication (as a line of text in the article, in an in-text link) of being a reprint from the same website:
These examples too are not cherry-picked, but rather, seem to be a consistent policy in which information contained within the headline is factually incorrect while the article’s content reflects the real date the event occurred;
Normally, errors like this would be chalked up to poor editing or a simple typo, but many of these events include the correct dates of the event in the actual content of the article.
This is a clear and recurring theme with many of TFTP’s articles and is a problem that cannot be chalked up to either poor editing or a typo. What shows is a desire to crank out articles quickly, in the fastest way possible to gain the most amount of views and remain topical.
From a reporting standpoint, the author must get the facts correct and the subject of dates is one of the most basic facts in a historical event. At the very least, the year in which the event occurred should be correct. All of these examples show that TFTP does not care about the facts of a case or event and purely desires the most clicks on their articles and site, utilizing clickbait tactics by including “X number of years ago…” in the headlines of articles.
Other instances of poor editing involve the inclusion of the incorrect state. For example, oftentimes an article will have, before the written portion of the story, the location (e.g., Lubbock, TX, Alexandria, VA, Provo, UT, etc.) in which the incident occurred. On occasion, these locations are not correct and point to a lack of editing and research. For example, in a December 2019 article, Agorist writes about an incident in which a school resource officer with the Clearwater County Sheriff’s Office was charged with rape. Agorist lists the incident as occurring in “Clearwater County, MI” meaning the incident occurred in Michigan.
Yet, every article that Agorist gets his information from (the Bemijdi Pioneer and Minneapolis Star-Tribune) are all Minneapolis based news outlets. Furthermore, there is no Clearwater County in Michigan but there is a Clearwater County in Minnesota. It is without question that this incident occurred in Minnesota, yet Agorist continues to claim in a more recent, July 2020 article that this incident occurred in Michigan.
Flaws in reporting like this are not major ones like what has been discussed above with the deliberate manipulations, plagiarism, or sensationalized news. But these errors indicate a lazy editor, a person who is distracted by getting an article out to the masses as quickly as possible and doing so at the expense of their readership. Given the fact that anyone looking at the articles TFTP relied upon could see the incident occurred in Minnesota and not Michigan, I think it is quite indicative that the website desires to not credibly inform, but rather get the article out as quickly as possible without fact-checking or verifying the information.
Not only does Agorist approve of both new (Seth Rich) and old (Waco) right-wing conspiracies, but he also seems to enjoy posting and approving of articles that center around destroying Hillary Clinton. For example, here are articles he wrote which express a disdain for Clinton and her policies while also utilizing Russia’s information warfare campaign to discredit the Democratic nominee;
This is not to say Agorist approves of Trump, as there are numerous articles written by him in which he is critical of the man. However, it is also undeniable to say that Agorist does not, to some extent, engage and believe in these theories and allegations as his writing upon them is extensive. As well, it is important to note that is one of the main writers and editors of the site; his entire goal is to edit what works are put on the site and maintain the site’s intent, whatever it may be in his eyes. With so many authors who push right-wing conspiracies, are vehemently opposed to Clinton and the Democratic party (in addition to Republican elites) why isn’t it probable that Agorist buys into some of these views and holds them as truth.
There is one more affiliation that TFTP has which is very concerning.
The Free Thought Project has a very close affiliation to the site RT, formerly known as Russia Today. This site is the state-sponsored news source for the Russian government. Now, any news agency that is unequivocally and blatantly described as being state-sponsored, first, should be treated as a biased source and taken with skepticism. The reasoning for this is obvious as the source will not be independent or really go against whatever the government in power is saying. The source’s content should be even more scrutinized when one has a government that is despotic or dictatorial (the Syrian Arab News Agency in Syria, the Anadolu Agency of Turkey, and the Turkmenistan State News Agency of Turkmenistan all being prime examples). The vast majority of independent researchers on politics, international relations and journalists from all sectors of U.S. and European reporting agencies and governmental agencies both domestic and abroad all regard RT as being a state-run media organization involved in anti-U.S./Western propaganda and being a questionable source. Matt Agorist, however, sees this quite differently.
Via the account named, “The Free Thought Project”, Agorist reposts many articles from RT such as these;
Obviously, taking articles from such a discredited source is poor on TFTP’s part, but this does not necessarily mean one agrees with them.
To best exemplify this, in a 20 July 2014 article, Agorist reprints an article from Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (former Asst. Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and noted conspiracy theorist, with interesting views on the JFK assassination and the Charlie Hebdo Shooting in addition to supporting Holocaust denier David Irving’s views on the Second World War) in which the entire article tries to cast doubt on the fact that Russia blew up the plane with a missile.
Agorist, by putting his name to this, whether he means to or not, is agreeing and endorsing the view that the Russians did not engage in the destruction of MH17 (going against what the evidence says) and basically agreeing with what the Russian government says about the incident.
In fact, if one looks at all the articles that come up when “Putin” is typed into TFTP’s search bar, there is not a single critical article of Vladimir Putin, with the articles mentioning him having headlines like these;
With articles like these, it is clear to see how TFTP views Putin and Russia, viewing them as anti-imperialists (though I think an argument could be made for the Ukraine, Chechnya, and Crimea that Russia is quite imperialistic) and supporters of the causes they the authors desire. It is also quite interesting how Agorist, in other articles, mentions “statists” and their collusion with the mainstream media to “prevent the public from finding out about real world news events” (though, as we have seen with certain articles, is not at all the case), yet has nothing but praise to say about Putin’s policies and tactics. For being so much against the U.S. and Western states for their centralized control over society and economics and engaging in foreign intervention, he has nothing but seeming admiration for the way Putin is performing this, which, by most accounts, is far more authoritarian and despotic.
Certain articles too are written with incredibly flowery language which
This type of loyalty to RT, the usage of passionate and supportive language of Vladimir Putin’s totalitarian regime, the inclusion of conspiracy theories that have been found to be linked to Russian hackers acting on the word of Russian intelligence and the President of Russia himself, is all highly suspect.
It is not a conclusion lacking in evidence that The Free Thought Project, either consciously or subconsciously, are engaging in information warfare, much like another site they have links to, GlobalResearch.
The Memes
Another aspect of TFTP’s marketing and outreach methods are their memes. The website uses memes as an effective way of getting their message out to a large audience with a catchy and attractive platform and marketing the site. Now, for a news organization to be in the meme-making industry is rather odd and some would say may even be journalistically unethical. However, much like with the other content available and produced by TFTP, these memes are occasionally not factually accurate and contain information that is either distorted, half-true, or rely upon unproven incidences. Below are a few examples of memes in which the site gets critical information wrong to better suit their own goals;
So, this meme (made and posted in 2017) makes the claim that there has been a large child pedophile ring in the Pentagon and that no law enforcement or government agencies investigated nor any prosecutions. What is true is that there was a pedophile ring consisting of 264 persons in the Pentagon and that an investigation was conducted in 2006 into this.
First, however, the “Department of Immigration and Customs” is not an agency; the website means Immigration and Customs Enforcement which is under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This is basic information that should be known by the creator if they are going to discuss it.
Furthermore, the meme alleges that no prosecutions have been made. However, in 2010, when the news first broke of this investigation, one (an NSA civilian contractor) had already been charged while one individual “was sentenced to five years in prison” and “Many others have also been sentenced and more people are still under investigation”. As reported two months later in The Hill, “a captain in the Army Reserves and a military prosecutor…pleaded guilty to last year to charges of possession of obscene matter of a minor in a sexual act in California” while another was indicted yet fled the country. This being said, it is true that many were not charged or investigated by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) in that their agency was simply too understaffed and had too little funds to properly investigate and the fact that ICE was uncooperative during the investigation. It is also entirely possible that these persons who were unable to be investigated by DCIS were investigated by other federal or military law enforcement agencies. While this meme has some aspects of truth to it, there are significant problems with its main thesis that no one at all was charged or investigated, which is blatantly false.
This 2018 meme obviously is making the argument that prohibition has contributed to the deaths of law enforcement throughout time, utilizing a time line to show the deaths of officers. However, there are multiple problems with the meme right off the bat. First, the meme claims that prohibition began in 1918 and lasted until 1933 for a period of fifteen years; while the meme is accurate that Prohibition ended in 1933, according to Encyclopædia Britannica, Prohibition began in 1920 and lasted only thirteen years.
In discussing another meme also getting at a similar message (“When the government bans popular substances, like liquor or marijuana, black market trade makes life more dangerous for those enforcing the ban”), PolitiFact found, “…despite the direct comparison between the deadly years of Prohibition and the war on drugs, police deaths have largely been on the decline for decades even as the drug war continues and the number of officers has grown significantly”.
As for the exact numbers the meme gets at, it appears the bulk of these are false. The meme claims that, from 1791 to 1918, 3,582 police officers were killed. Utilizing the year search on the non-profit Officer Down Memorial Page, however, one finds that 4,939 police officers were killed in total. Now, also the meme does not make a distinction anywhere throughout that they are counting duty or non-duty deaths, but, even if one removes those deaths of officers who died through non-duty incidences (structural collapse, inadvertent gunshot, drowning, etc.), the number still is unable to reaching anywhere close to the 3,582 number mentioned in the meme.
The meme also claims that, between 1918 and 1933, 3,963 officers were killed. However, by again using the ODMP search function, it details that 4,609 officers were killed. What this indicates to me is that the deaths listed in the meme were not picked because the creator desired to be factually accurate, but rather conjured up numbers that would better fit with the argument they were trying to make. This type of tactic, for a news organization, is very inappropriate and only assists in misleading readers and misinforming the public.
In another, more recent meme, the creator credits Samuel L. Jackson with saying “In some ways I prefer the Coronavirus to the Police. I fucking hate the virus, but at least it doesn’t pretend it’s here to help. It doesn’t drive around the neighborhood with protect and serve painted on it’s side before it kills you”. The creator of the meme, upon posting this to Reddit, even stated in the headline, “Yes this is a REAL Sam Jackson quote…”. However, as one astute commenter pointed out in the comments, this quote by Jackson actually was not said by Samuel L. Jackson, but rather a character Jackson plays in the 2020 Netflix film Death to 2020.
Crediting a quote an actor says while giving a performance to the actor themselves is rather wrong as I think many would agree. As an example, let’s say there was a meme which featured Ralph Fiennes and credited him with saying the quote, “They cast a spell on you, you know, the Jews. When you work closely with them, like I do, you see this. They have this power. It’s like a virus”.
However, given that this quote comes from the 1993 film Schindler’s List in which Fiennes is acting as the camp commandant, Amon Göth, this becomes a very distorted, unfair, and ethically wrong tactic, both to the reader and to the person whom the quote is credited.
This is not the only time that the website has made memes with public figures featured in them in an attempt to draw attention. Often, these memes can include persons like Rob Schneider, George Carlin, Woody Harrelson, and Chris Rock. As with all of these listed examples, none of the persons who are shown in the meme have made these statements exactly as credited. By using these persons in the meme and including text that sounds like something they would say or an issue they may comment on (for example, the Harrelson meme has to do with weed legalization), it leads the viewer to believe that the actor or comedian or public figure did in fact say this when there is no evidence they did at all.
So, the meme above tries to make the claim that police officers kill more Americans than mass shooting perpetrators do by saying that 392 have died in mass shootings since 2015 and that 6,571 were killed by police since 2015. However, these numbers are seriously deflated and inflated respectively.
Examining the first number (392), this is found to be false immediately. According to a BBC article written in 2015, “There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870″. According to PBS, in 2016, 284 people died in mass shootings.
According to researchers at Northeastern University in conjunction with USA Today and the Associated Press, 224 people were killed in 2017. In 2018, Business Insider reported that 373 people died in mass shootings. In 2019, the researchers at Northeastern with assistance from the media, found that 211 persons died in mass shootings. According to The Crime Report, run by John Jay College, in September of 2020, 320 people had died due to mass shootings.
So, counting these numbers together from 2015 to September 2020, we have 1,887 persons killed by mass shootings in the United States. Now, while I have not gone through the nationality of each victim in these shootings, I argue it is safe to say that if one did so, it would still extremely exceed the 392 Americans killed in mass shootings listed in the meme.
As for the second part of the meme, the data on this is rather easy to find, given the fact that the media has begun heavily documenting these activities. According to the Washington Post, “Last year [2018] police shot and killed 998 people, 11 more than the 987 they fatally shot in 2017. In 2016, police killed 963 people, and 995 in 2015”. The Washington Post again recorded that 999 persons were killed by the police in 2019. Finally, the Washington Post again noted that (as of 27 January 2021) “984 people have been shot and killed by police”.
Adding these together, one gets a number of 5,926 persons having been shot and killed by the police from 2015 to 2021, over 600 persons less than the meme above says were killed.
In a Reddit comment, the creator of the meme defends it stating they gained the bottom number from the website Mapping Police Violence. However, upon examining the website and downloading their full database listed on the main page, one can see that the database actually indicates that, since 2015 and up to 2020, 6,641 persons were killed by the police.
This is interesting as the person provides evidence to, seemingly, back up their claim, yet their own source shows a different number than they themselves included.
I argue that the creator of the meme did no such research for this whatsoever, but instead merely chose numbers that sounded accurate and then provided evidence they hoped would support their position. Instead of crafting a suitable commentary on how many persons are shot and killed by the police and the destructiveness of gun violence in America, the meme itself has not only spread misinformation, but demarcated that one issue (police shootings v. mass shootings) is more severe than the other, which is nowhere near the case.
There are also additional memes such as these;
In a way, these memes are a form of clickbait, meant to advertise the website by putting out information that is often distorted or blatantly false as well as attractive to the eye and incendiary in content. As a marketing tool, this is quite effective at carrying out the site’s
Free of Thought Founders
Just as important as the factual veracity of the site are the persons who created the site.
As mentioned before, the two main persons involved in the creation of TFTP is Matt Agorist and Jason Bassler. Information on Bassler is rather scant, while information on Agorist is rather plentiful.
In an investigation made by WUSA 9, a CBS-affiliate in the District of Columbia, into The Free Thought Project, they are able to interview Matt Agorist. However, this was not easy as they state, “Dozens of voicemails, emails, Tweets and Facebook messages left us with several cancelled interviews and no real confirmation of his identity or credentials. It turns out Matt Agorist is not his real name. The pen name is an offshoot of the term “agorism,” a concept related to libertarian counter-economics”. The fact that the name is a pseudonym is pretty dishonest and not very transparent. It is somewhat hypocritical that they demand the government and law enforcement have transparency yet they themselves are not capable of holding themselves to the same standards they expect of others, being open with their own identities. They surely would not tolerate an officer of the law utilizing a pseudonym reflective of their political views in official duties, yet they themselves engage in such activity.
With some digging, however, Matt Agorist’s real name can be easily found. A search for “free thought llc” provides the link to a website on corporate entities and then to the Louisiana’s Secretary of State’s business filings page.
This page confirms there is a Limited Liability Company titled “Free Thought LLC.”, which lists two men named Matt Savoy and Jason Bassler as officers of the company.
A quick note, as of January 2022, the LLC is active, yet labeled “not in good standing for failure to file annual report” according to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s Office. According to the Dunn & Bradstreet Corporation, an American commercial data and analytics company, Free Thought LLC has an estimated annual revenue of around $62,831 USD. Bassler again is also listed as being a board member with the corporation.
In the video of the Agorist interview conducted by WUSA-9, there are a series of degrees on the back wall; it is possible to infer one diploma reads “University of Louisiana” which matches a university that it appears the Matt Savoy associated with the LLC graduated from.
This individual also appears to be a registered Republican which might explain why there are so many right-wing conspiracies hosted on the site. Furthermore, on the site, he identifies himself as “an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA”; some deeper digging reveals he held the rank of Sergeant (E-5) and served for four years.
While this is speculation, given his rather low rank and time in service, it is likely that Savoy served in the Marine Cryptologic Support Battalion, a unit which is “under the operational control of the Director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service”. Again, this is simply an educated guess and, without verification from another Marine or official government records, then this is simply speculation.
As for Bassler, as mentioned previously, little information is available. What is known is that, in addition to his activities with The Free Thought Project, he also works as a “Content Creator” with the non-profit organization Free & Equal Elections Foundation, a “non-profit non-partisan organization with a mission to open the electoral process through education and collaborative action”. This organization itself has some rather odd links, hosting Ed Asner, Marianne Williams, Sean Stone, Larry King, and Ron Paul, all personalities who frequently decry the “political left and right” while holding forth a Left Libertarian or Independent view. Furthermore, all of these persons have, at one time or another, engaged heavily in harmful and factually inaccurate conspiracy promulgation, aligned themselves with dictatorships that harshly and illegally treat their populaces while defending those states, and continually furthering the divide between everyday Americans.
It is also important to note that, sometime after Facebook removed a variety of content, including TFTP, from their servers, both of TFTP’s founders were interviewed by RT to talk about it. In one section, they write, “It is hard to overestimate the implications for those that were swept up in the purge, Matt Savoy of The Free Thought Project said…”.
Now, why is this important?
Because, up until then, Matt Agorist was the name gone by; WUSA-9 did not disclose Agorist’s real name in their interview, Bassler never revealed Agorist’s real name in any interview, everything on the site was linked back to Agorist and still is, post October 2018 (the date the RT article was published). What this means is that either (A) Agorist was comfortable enough to share his real name because he found them credible sources of information or (B) RT already knew Agorist’s real name and utilized it in their quotations because they had a profitable relationship with one another. Not only did Agorist give his real name in an interview with RT, but he made similar comments under his real name to Sputnik, also another Russian Federation supported news organization.
Regardless of the real reason, his duplicitous nature with other journalists and approving of pro-Russian news organizations that are knowingly spreading disinformation says a lot about his values and ethics.
Not only does Agorist have odd ties to RT, but this extends to other members affiliated with the site. One member of the site, both a writer and the site’s social media marketer, Johnny Liberty, (a pseudonym) created a site called MuricaToday, which was abbreviated as MT. The site is now deactivated, but was seen as being an RT copy and archived copies of this site suggest as much. The link between MuricaToday and The Free Thought Project is also solidified in an interview the author gave to a YouTube channel.
It is very odd that TFTP exhibits such a longing admiration for both Vladimir Putin and Russia Today as well as hiring people who are affiliated with the organization, have created similar organizations, and proliferated similar content. It seems possible that TFTP’s alliance and close relationship with Russian government sources may go beyond pure adoration into something more serious.
What is the Free Thought Project’s goal?
So, why is TFTP doing this? They have the ability to attain a large following, the skills to create a site that is visually appealing (although ad laden that makes things hectic for mobile users), and the time to somewhat edit and write articles, so why are they making so many mistakes, writing articles while pulling from both political spectrums, and overall being the most self-righteous they can possibly be? This is an interesting question and one that I have found an answer to.
Quite simply, it has to do with money.
Going back to the WUSA article, the reporters note, “Another crucial aspect that sets The Free Thought Project apart from the mainstream is their “pay for performance” business model. His writers are paid based on how many clicks each article gets online. Simply put, more clicks equal a bigger paycheck. Agorist maintains his site receives anywhere between six to 15 million unique views a month and reaches 60 million people on Facebook. You don’t need to be a mathematician to know that there is a potential for financial gain. When it comes to media consumption today, if the content is compelling—and incendiary—enough, you’ll get the clicks.[sic] As editor-in-chief, Matt Agorist stands by the validity of the content posted on The Free Thought Project. Many of the facts that serve as the foundation for stories on the site are attributed to reputable, mainstream news outlets, such as Reuters and Associated Press”.
This is where a lot of TFTP’s tactics become understandable now. The site has a pay-per-click method, so naturally, the more clicks gotten on articles, then the more revenue the site will be able to collect. The site needs to be able to get clicks on their massive amount of articles, so the more incendiary the content is or the more sensationalized headlines and articles are, the more clicks they’ll get and in turn revenue. As well, TFTP’s alliances with other media sources that are widely discredited and extremely verging into the conspiratorial and almost insane allows their site to get free advertising and, by making content that deliberately appeals to the members of other, more Conspiracy prone sites, they will get more members and more revenue.
The entire point of TFTP’s sensationalizing, clickbait type headlines, intense and often vitriolic commentary has the end goal of gaining revenue for the site’s writers and owners; the advertising of content on other sites like GlobalResearch and ZeroHedge and RT amplifies the spread that TFTP has and the way in which they are catering their content with articles that are anti-Trump, articles that are anti-Hillary, articles that touch on right-wing conspiracies. As well, due to Agorist’s political affiliation, it is now understandable why there are so many right-wing conspiracies that are present on the site; he probably agrees with most of them or at least recognizes the potential they have economically. What is even more interesting about this is that Agorist admits that the majority of the facts are taken from more mainstream agencies; to be classified as journalism, one must produce and distribute reports on developments in the realm of news and current events. By taking the facts that others have reported on (sometimes days or weeks afterward) and including one’s own commentary around the actual facts of the incident, then that is not legitimate journalism nor breaking news journalism, as TFTP tries to sell themselves.
The entire endeavor is designed to make money and be profitable to the founders and writers. The expanding of TFTP content to other news agencies which cater to both anti-government and conspiracy theorist types is not because they as a whole agree with everything, but in order to gain more revenue for themselves. Even on their main page, there is a disclaimer that I have been unable to find on any other reputable news organization (beyond in the columns/opinion section), which states, “Any views expressed here-in are not necessarily those held by TheFreeThoughtProject.com”. This type of disclaimer is something one more sees on opinionated articles or columns on the Washington Post or the New York Times, not something one would find on a website on the whole that classifies themselves as being a journalistic entity.
Conclusions
The end question in all of this is “Is The Free Thought Project credible or untrustworthy? Are they a journalistic agency or not?”
The answer is clear; they are not at all credible nor should be relied upon for any information. Their long history of getting the most basic facts wrong, having a skewed pay-per-performance model, deliberately twisting information to make for a better or more enticing story, having false headlines that attract, plagiarizing from other, more respected news agencies, doing very little, if any, real reporting, hiring writers with questionable associations and views, and allying themselves with other news agencies that also are completely discredited or conspiratorial proves this.
In terms of whether TFTP is a journalistic agency or not, it is helpful to refer again to the code of ethics contained within the Society of Professional Journalists. As mentioned previously, the code is a list of ethical qualities that all journalists should abide by and should try to follow in the conduct of their trade. Taking what was previously mentioned, we can see if TFTP abides by this code or not:
Does TFTP abide by the same high standards they expect of others? No.
Does TFTP plagiarize? Yes, at least once.
Does TFTP deliberately distort the facts or context of a story? Yes, prolifically.
Does TFTP avoid pandering to lucid curiosity? No.
Does TFTP provide updates to news stories? No.
Does TFTP label their commentary and distinguishes it from their reporting? Not in the slightest.
Does TFTP take care in editing content for factual inaccuracies, grammatical errors, or overall errors in reporting? No.
Quite simply, TFTP in no way abides by this code of ethics and flagrantly breaks this code multiple times. Throughout this essay, there are clear and abundant examples of TFTP failing to abide by this code. As well, a common theme with TFTP is railing against the mainstream media for doing a lack of meaningful or accurate reporting. Ideally, every reporter should abide by SPJ’s Code of Ethics and one would reason, if TFTP dislikes the mainstream media and desires to be better than then, one could reason they would act more in accordance with this code of ethics. However, this is simply not the case and they are seemingly far worse than the majority of news agencies they rail against, like the Associated Press or Reuters.
Go back to Agorist’s challenge for a moment, “Call us out. If you think it's fake, try to prove that. They’re not going to be able to, which is why we’re not fake news”.
Before that, one must define what fake news is. The University of Michigan defines fake news as being, “news stories that are false: the story is fabricated, with no verifiable facts, sources or quotes…these stories may be propaganda that is intentionally designed to mislead the reader, or may be designed as “clickbait” written for economic incentives (the writer profits on the number of people who click on the story)”.
Throughout this long essay, it has been shown that TFTP has concocted stories that are based upon fabrications (the Alexandria Hill story in which Agorist claims that the father had medical marijuana for seizures being an example), deliberately create quotes from content that is unverifiable and may not even exist (the Angela Goodwin-Springfield story), and creates sensational headlines for clicks (far too many examples to list).
Going by the University of Michigan’s definition of what fake news is, The Free Thought Project absolutely meets the qualifications to be considered this.
Based on all the evidence, the only conclusion one can come to about The Free Thought Project is that their goal is not to actually inform the public or their readers. Their goal is not to inform their readers about instances of corruption or abuse of power within government, nor to report truthfully on these issues. Their goal is not to “foster the creation and expansion of liberty minded solutions,” but is instead designed to deliberately move the reader to a certain point of view. While there is nothing explicitly wrong with this, if that certain point of view is built upon very little evidence, misconstrued parts of what truly happened, misleading headlines and text, or outright dishonest practices, then that is not fostering any type of free thought, but is pushing toward a solution that is not built upon any true, solid, or real evidence.
In the end, there are two ways of classifying the site’s goals and intentions.
At the least, Matt Agorist and The Free Thought Project are engaging in pay-per-performance practices and utilizing shoddy reporting, dishonest journalistic practices, and push conspiracy theories because they realize that it sells and they can make big money off of doing little to no work.
At the worst, they are engaging in a deliberate attempt to mislead the public in an attempt to influence the U.S. public and change the course of U.S. society, foreign and domestic policy, and change the outcomes of elections to assist in larger, more destructive and insidious plans by a foreign power like the Russian Federation.
However, regardless of how one considers TFTP, it is undeniable that TFTP is nowhere near a credible source nor at all an accurate source for developments in foreign affairs, U.S. law, domestic policy, or any other sort of news at all.
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