Dear Friends,
At UNN we are now sick and tired of the smear campaign that has been going on against us for months.
We are an innovative grassroots news organisation that looks at complex issues across the UK and the world.
However, an organisation called ‘Stop Funding Fake News’ is trying to get us to lose our ability to accept your donations & support with lies and smears in what amounts to, in our opinion, a campaign of bullying and harassment.
UNN is regulated by IMPRESS, the regulator that came about from the Leveson enquiry, that means we have to abide by standards of journalism. Likewise Newsguard, which was set up to weed out ‘fake news’, has given us a top rating. We don’t always get everything right but we try our best to represent the facts to the best of our abilities.
This campaign is being supported by blue-tick celebrities Rachel Riley and Mike Stuchbery. Rachel Riley has recently been having meetings with Twitter to try and get Katie Hopkins & George Galloway kicked off the platform for spreading ‘hate’. Mike Stuchbery is a well known figure who agitates against those he perceives to be ‘far right’.
David Clews of UNN has said in response to this:
Carl Pearson and I founded UNN two years ago as an alternative voice to that of the mainstream media. We are a tolerant, open & inclusive organisation that embraces diversity of ideas and opinion. What we find really disturbing about all of this is that this organisation is telling blatant lies about UNN such as saying Carl Pearson is the son of UKIP’s Lord Pearson.
They then double down with more smears and lies in attempts to stop us raising funds through our payment processors.
These tweets have then been amplified by both Rachel Riley & Mike Stuchbery to upwards of over 700,000 people on Twitter.
There has been a great deal of talk recently about the mental health of individuals and how behaviour of others can impact on this.
Rachel Riley today retweeted a message calling for Mental Health First Aid in the workplace.
The question we would ask Rachel, Mike and others is how do they think that by amplifying blatant untruths will affect the Mental Health of our team? Many of our team are parents, carers etc and rely on the income they receive from UNN to keep a roof over their head. Whilst we don’t ask that everyone agrees with our articles or political opinions surely we live in a free society that should allow the sharing of ideas?
I have reached out to all the parties concerned by email/Twitter etc to invite them on to one of our shows to discuss the issues they have with us but as of the time of writing we have yet to receive a reply. This was done so in the spirit of openness and friendship that we pride ourselves upon.
We would kindly ask that you click below and watch Friday night’s live show that breaks down in detail the full extent of the lies and smears that we face.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TzLW3fFEaY[/embedyt]Moving forward we are looking to come up with a long term funding strategy and we will be in touch about that but in the meantime thanks for all the support you give us and encouragement.
Carl, David & The UNN Team
Opinions from the Unity News Network (UNN) editorial team & various contributors. | UNN always clearly distinguishes between news and opinion pieces and as an open minded outlet we publish views from a variety of people and organisation that do not necessarily reflect the views of UNN or its writers. Articles published under UNN Opinions are always opinion pieces and if published on behalf of a contributor will contain that authors name at the start of the piece.
