The Daily Expose: Who’s Behind the Site?
A Logical investigation reveals that Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire resident Jonathan Allen-Walker is behind the conspiracy news site, The Daily Expose.
In November of last year, The Daily Expose, a U.K.-based conspiracy website, was created, and it has since promoted a standard selection of COVID-deniers, anti vaxxers, and Great Reset stories framed as breaking news.
As a result, its articles are shared thousands of times every day on Telegram, Twitter, and private chat channels, showing its immense influence in the alt-news ecosystem. Even though the website is less than a year old, it has seen over 300,000 monthly page views since January, with the last available data suggesting that it had more than 1.5 million total cumulative views.
The Daily Expose produces original content several times per day, unlike conspiracy sites that reshare memes or articles from elsewhere. It claims to use only official government or scientific documents in the stories it writes on its “about” page.
A number of conspiratorial narratives are pushed by the writers who often distort or misinterpret information within snapshots of the documents. For example, The Daily Expose claims that vaccines were approved without any kind of safety checks, and that vaccines cause mass deaths.
Scientists, government officials, and other qualified experts are not interviewed by the writers or contributors to ensure they are interpreting these documents correctly.
No institution or figure they are reporting on is allowed to respond, contrary to what is expected from a journalist. Mike Yeadon, for example, has been interviewed by the Daily Expose, but the interviews consist of a transcript of his opinions, which are neither questioned nor verified. In addition to remaining anonymous, neither the writer(s) nor any other journalists have been able to verify their work, since they have not been held accountable for their content.
The website carries the weight of official documents without the transparency of a reputable science publication or the accountability of a credible journalist, making it a dangerous platform for misinformation.
November 2020 marks the first posting of The Daily Expose. The Daily Expose’s main account was suspended by Twitter in March, but it made a succession of alt accounts almost immediately to get around the ban. At least five accounts were created after the initial suspension.
To prevent losing followers or the ability to tweet when a single account was banned, The Daily Expose started running pairs of accounts after the second ban. Ban-evading
accounts would always point followers to the paired account, claiming Twitter was censoring them. There were usually separate phone numbers and email accounts from different providers, although they all linked to The Daily Expose website and had similar bios, images, and headers.
They have 18k and 14k followers respectively on two of their albums. Their Twitter referral rate is more than 65 percent.
Almost all of the articles appear anonymously, signed online with the “Daily Expose” byline, with the exception of a regular column written by Emily Smith of Leeds under the WordPress handle captaindaretofly, as well as other occasional one-time contributors. Smith does not post anonymously on other social media sites.
The owner of the website is not known to Smith. During a podcast episode with Denty and Shaz, she says she does not write for money, but rather contributes articles voluntarily. A request for comment was not returned.
Denty and Shaz are credited as the creators of this video in a video posted on The Daily Expose’s page.
Additionally, the Daily Expose has a YouTube channel with 1.8k subscribers and regularly posts videos in a similar style. Denty and Shaz did not reply to a request for comment.
The Daily Expose does not disclose how many contributors it has, nor whether it has any permanent staff beyond Allen-Walker. Tweets from the account indicate that there are multiple people involved in the operation.
Uncertainty surrounds the operation’s finances. From its homepage, Twitter, and Telegram, it has run a monthly fundraising campaign since at least February. In addition to Buy Me A Coffee, there have been some other sporadic attempts at Crowdfunding on other platforms.
One campaign on GoFundMe brought in over £3600 in donations. There was no information on businesses listed with Allen-Walker’s information on Companies House.
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