Consortium News announced on their X account early on Sunday morning, Oct. 27 that “Something has happened to our website and every article after June 2023 has been wiped out. We are working on restoring a year and a half of articles. We do not know why this has happened…. Our web host has confirmed seven recent data breaches and now it appears that our site has been totally replaced. We have been hacked.” The website is currently wiped clean–all pages are blank. A quick review of several leading cybersecurity websites (Bleeping Computer, KrebsonSecurity, Cyber Scoop, etc.) shows no further details at this time.
A year ago, nearly to the day, on Oct. 23, 2023, Consortium for Independent Journalism, a nonprofit that publishes Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/23/us-government-newsguard-sued-by-consortium-news/">sued the United States government and internet “watchdog” NewsGuard Technologies, Inc.
“Consortium News’s court filing charges the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, an element of the Intelligence Community, with contracting with NewsGuard to identify, report and abridge the speech of American media organizations that dissent from U.S. official positions on foreign policy,” read the October 2023 article. The U.S. Cyber Command is notable for being a “revolving door” entity, recycling former military and intelligence operatives (such as the NSA), through it and the private sector.
