Top editor at US-based media site with anti-Israeli content quietly funded in the past by Iranian government-owned media

News site editor’s ties to Iran show misinformation’s complexity​

A top editor at an online news site aimed at Americans who has worked extensively for Russia’s Sputnik also has taken money from Iranian government-owned media, according to newly unearthed documents — a sign of how widening geopolitical alliances are making it harder to identify and trace foreign influence operations.

Hacked emails and other documents from the Iranian government-funded Press TV show payments of thousands of dollars to Wyatt Reed, a writer who is now a Washington-based editor for the online publication Grayzone. In addition, the site’s founder, Max Blumenthal, regularly appears on Russian television and once accepted a trip to Moscow for a celebration of Russian state-controlled video network RT that featured Vladimir Putin [the same party that Mike Flynn attended, sitting at Putin's table].

The Press TV files, much of them in Persian, were released on Telegram in 2022 by a self-proclaimed hacktivist group called Black Reward, but the files received little attention then.

Grayzone posts content on the web, X and YouTube and has been highly critical of Iran’s regional enemy Israel, as well as its supporters in the United States.

The First Amendment guarantees free speech rights even for Americans believed to be spreading foreign propaganda. But current and former intelligence officials say Americans’ tolerance for information paid for by foreign actors has made disinformation one of the most critical threats to U.S. democracy. Foreign support for ostensibly independent publications gives other countries deniability for disinformation as well as protection from internet platforms’ labeling the output as coming from state-sponsored outlets.

Attorneys who deal regularly with Iran sanctions issues said U.S. journalists who were paid by sanctioned Iranian media entities could be in legal jeopardy unless they were granted waivers by the U.S. Treasury Department. The United States has granted some limited exceptions for state media employees sent to cover events in the country.

Reed is not the only Grayzone author to have worked for Russian outlets. Grayzone contributor and London journalist Mohamed Elmaazi wrote full-time for Sputnik between 2019 and 2021, he says on his LinkedIn profile. Regular Grayzone freelancer Jeremy Loffredo was full-time at RT in the same years, according to his LinkedIn. Neither responded to requests for comment.

Hello Senator.