The Canary (website)

The Canary was created in October 2015 with five founding members in an attempt to "diversify the media", according to editor-in-chief Kerry-Anne Mendoza.[4] The website was funded by advertising and monthly contributions from around 1,500 supporters in August 2016.[5]

A major factor motivating The Canary's founders, Mendoza said, was scepticism of the mainstream media, a scepticism shared by Jeremy Corbyn, the then leader of the Labour Party. In his first address as Labour leader, he attacked pundits for not understanding the discontent among many ordinary British voters, and talked about the "power of social media".[5]

Following the 2017 United Kingdom general election, the BBC reported that "Sites such as The Canary, The Skwawkbox, and Another Angry Voice are making a huge impact and earning a massive following."[3]

In August 2019, The Canary announced on Twitter that the comedian Alexei Sayle would be writing a regular column.[6] He wrote two columns, in August and September that year.[7]

Describing her website to Journalism.co.uk, Canary editor-in-chief Kerry-Anne Mendoza said that:

For us, this is ultimately about democracy. Informed consent in the public is the bedrock of democracy, and if that informed consent isn't there because people aren't aware of the kind of information that they need to be, they won't be equipped to make the decent democratic decisions that they need to, say, for example, on climate change, the justice system, or whether austerity is a positive economic policy.[4]

The Canary is generally supportive of Corbyn, but has also supported Natalie Bennett (former leader of the Green Party) and the Greens' "radical alternative" to the "Tory-lite" policies of "the neoliberal Labour Party" asserting "The Green Party's rise to viability preceded the election of Jeremy Corbyn" and the emergence of Momentum.[8]

Mendoza claims that it was "a complete coincidence" that the website was created shortly after Corbyn's leadership victory. "We don't have any affiliations with political parties, we don't have any affiliations with political organisations, and we're not actually ostensibly left-wing", she added, calling the site's editorial stance "a counterpoint to conservative media" and "broadly liberal".[9] Mendoza also stated that The Canary was "biased in favour of social justice, equal rights – those are non-negotiable things. We’re in this as an issue-driven organisation", and stated: "Every press organisation has an editorial stance and we’re certainly no different."[10]

In common with other left-wing alternative media sites, The Canary's stance towards the Labour leadership became more critical after Corbyn stepped down and Keir Starmer was elected as Labour leader in 2020.[11]

In August 2017, The Canary joined the voluntary state-approved press regulator IMPRESS.[12] IMPRESS upheld two of the 58 complaints they received during 2017/18 about The Canary's news reporting.[13]

In April 2019, The Canary was given an overall pass rating and a pass on eight out of nine factors (it failed on “handles the difference between news and opinion responsibly”) by NewsGuard, an organisation which evaluates news outlets for trustworthiness.[14][15]

A 2018 study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism described The Canary as "a left-wing partisan site" and an example of "alternative and partisan brands" which have "a political or ideological agenda and their user base tends to passionately share these views". Its trust rating was given as 4.69 where 10 is fully trusted, making it more trusted than the Daily Mail, Buzzfeed News and The Sun, but less than The Daily Mirror, the regional press or any broadsheet newspaper, although its trust level among its own users was at 6.65 (a similar level to The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and the regional press).[16]

Mendoza has said: "We are human beings and we make mistakes. We clean up the mess and make sure it's clear to our readership".[17] The Canary said that as of March 2019 it had produced 10,000 articles since its creation and two of its articles required deletion after editorial review, representing 0.02% of its content.[18]

In early 2019, the campaign organisation Stop Funding Fake News, described The Canary as promoting conspiracy theories, defending antisemitism, and publishing fake news.[19][20] The campaign was launched to pressure advertisers not to allow their ads to run on certain websites. The campaign persuaded Macmillan Cancer Support to suspend advertising on The Canary while it reviewed online ad placement.[21] In response to criticisms from the campaign, a co-founder of The Canary, Nancy Mendoza, who is Jewish, said that neither she nor the site was antisemitic and that it had taken a position of solidarity with the Palestinian people.[22] Then MP Chris Williamson described the SFFN's campaign against The Canary as "sinister".[23]

In April 2016, Mendoza said in Free & Fearless (a magazine produced by Hacked Off) that:

we are attracting an audience of 3.5 million unique users per month. On top of this: every two hours, 24 hours a day, seven days a week – someone becomes a paid subscriber of The Canary ... Our growing traffic is attracting advertisers who are now offering us a floor RPM (payment per 1,000 hits) of £3 and a ceiling of £9."[24]

According to The Canary's FAQ, around half of the website's revenue is raised from online advertising, and the other half from reader subscriptions.[18]

The website explains its business model: "Each writer and section editor is paid in two ways. Firstly, each and every article receives a flat-rate equal payment from our monthly income from supporters. So with each new supporter, the pay per article goes up for everyone every month. Secondly, each article receives a top-up payment based directly on the percentage of web traffic, and therefore advertising income, that articles generate during a given calendar month."[25] This pay-per-click model has been criticised for promoting clickbait as writers are only paid for their work if it becomes viral.[26] Mendoza disputes this, claiming that the payment structure means that people who generate the revenues get a fair share.[5]

During 2016–18, the website had an editorial team of around 30, although only five of The Canary's staff earn enough money to work full-time.[5][27] It had an annual turnover of £250,000 in 2016.[28]

In August 2019, The Canary emailed users to announce that it would rely more on its inhouse team and less on freelance contributors, due to a reduced income.[29][30] After the email was shared online, Mendoza said on Twitter that, by the middle of this August, the website would "leave the gig economy".[31] The Canary said this was due to Facebook and Google changing their algorithms, which reduced the site's traffic and therefore advertising income, and to the campaign to persuade advertisers to blacklist the site: it said it was "susceptible to pressure from political Zionists, and our advertising revenue is under fire".[32][31][33] The Canary mounted a recruitment drive for one thousand additional subscribers, which it reported it had achieved by early August, saying this had secured its immediate future.[34] In March 2020, advertising for Tom Stoppard's play Leopoldstadt about the legacy of the Holocaust were removed from The Canary in response to its concerns about antisemitism.[20]

Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite the Union has said to the Morning Star in 2017:

"The media needs regulating, the control of information shouldn't be in the hands of a few billionaires. Alternative media needs supporting … I'd support everything that chips away at Establishment control of the narrative — The Canary, the Skwawkbox, all of it."[35]

Max Keiser, in his programme for the RT channel, has said that the site "really digs into some of the salient points that need to be made about austerity", saying in an interview with Kerry-Anne Mendoza that he has "been following this site for a while now".[36] Former Respect MP George Galloway also praised the website on his show Sputnik, also for RT.[37]

Jasper Jackson in the New Statesman labelled sites like The Canary as "hyper-partisan", owing to its mainly pro-Corbyn content.[38] Carl Miller of Demos has said that, while the "digital world" has been "democratizing", he believes that sites such as The Canary, which reflect a single worldview, cut down on dissenting information and are likely to make people "even angrier, more outraged, more certain that that [sic] people we disagree with are evil... which isn't good for reasoned, civil debate".[5] Owen Jones told PR Week in January 2017 that the website "promotes conspiracy theories and a lot of things that just aren't right. I worry about the Canary-isation of the left, where it ends up in a bizarre sub-culture that anyone who doesn't agree is seen as part of a conspiracy. But then you do get those blogs on left and right."[39]

The Canary has published a number of stories which have been notable enough to be picked up by mainstream media outlets.

During July 2016, The Canary achieved over 7.5 million page views, ranking 97th in readership among British media organisations, slightly higher than The Spectator and The Economist. The site's publishers, Canary Media, rose 47 spots from 126th in June to 79th in July among the top UK publishers.[53] By June 2020 the site had fallen out of the top 1,000 with just over 600,000 pageviews.[54] The majority of its site traffic comes from Facebook.[5]

A 2018 study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found The Canary to be used by 2% of the UK news audience, compared with The Times website on 5% or The Guardian on 15%. Its readers were more left-wing than readers of all but one other publication in the survey.[16]

• Paul Staines
• The London Economic

• Collins, John; Mills, Tom (29 September 2017). "The BBC versus The Canary: two experts have their say". The Conversation. Retrieved 26 November 2020.

• Official website