Zero Hedge
On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
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| Web address | www |
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Type of site
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Editorial, News aggregation, Business news |
| Available in | English |
| Launched | January 2009 |
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Alexa rank
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 1,161 (November 2016[update])[1] |
Zero Hedge is a conservative and libertarian financial blog that aggregates news and presents editorial opinions from original and outside sources. It reports on economics, Wall Street, and the financial sector and is credited with bringing the controversial practice of flash trading to public attention in 2009 via a series of posts alleging that Goldman Sachs' access to flash order information allowed it to gain unfair profits. The news portion of the site is written by a group of editors who collectively write under the pseudonym "Tyler Durden, or Robert Meyers", a character from the novel and film Fight Club. In more recent years, the site has been increasingly attacked by the political establishment as being far right.[2]
Contents
Profile
Zero Hedge was founded in January 2009.[3] Posts are signed "Tyler Durden", a character in the Chuck Palahniuk book and movie Fight Club,[4] reflecting the news site's activist posture.[3] Despite speculation that "Tyler Durden" is a pseudonym of Daniel Ivandjiiski,[4][5] who was penalized for insider trading in New York in September 2008, Ivandjiiski denies being a founder of Zero Hedge. Rather, he says he is one of several writers contributing to the site under the pseudonym.[6] In an interview, "Durden" said there were four editors at Zero Hedge[3] but another editor said there were up to 40.[note 1][4] "Durden" claims editors have experience in various areas of finance and operations.[3]
The online newspaper publishes anonymously to protect the editors from retaliation for dissident speech. "Durden" maintains that this also safeguards integrity, objectivity, and independence. "Durden" cites McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, which upheld anonymity as a First Amendment right of free speech.[3]
The site was described by CNNMoney as offering a "deeply conspiratorial, anti-establishment and pessimistic view of the world".[7]
Readership and influence
By September 2009, Zero Hedge had begun drawing more traffic than more established financial websites[6] with 333,000 unique visitors a month, impressing even those who say the news site is full of conspiracy theory and "apocalyptic world view".[5] Durden says two-thirds of its readers are from Wall Street.[3] According to Quantcast, in 2012 Zero Hedge had a monthly global traffic of 1.8 million people.[8] Under the name Tyler Durden, Ivandjiiski was interviewed on Bloomberg Radio[4][9] and Zero Hedge has been quoted in the Columbia Journalism Review.[10]
In December 2012, Bank of America blocked its employees' access to Zero Hedge.[11]
Matt Taibbi, in his book Griftopia, cites Zero Hedge in the last chapter as accurately assessing the level of corruption in the banking industry and credits its inside advantage. He questions why mainstream financial media did not earlier detect the corruption at Goldman Sachs. Taibbi writes, "Right around that same time, there were three media stories that helped focus a swirl of seriously negative attention on the bank. My piece was one, New York magazine's Joe Hagan wrote another, and the third was a series of stories by a heretofore little-known blogger who went by the nom de plume of "Tyler Durden" on a blog called Zero Hedge."[12]
Controversy
On January 31, 2020, Twitter suspended ZeroHedge's account (@zerohedge) for publishing the article, "Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?" [13]. The article contains contact information for a Chinese researcher involved in studying mutated coronavirus strains at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a level-4 bio-hazard laboratory located 20 miles from the seafood market believed to be the site of initial human infection.
Footnotes
- ↑ Other contributions are under the pseudonym "Marla Singer", another character from Fight Club.
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Damien Hoffman, "First Amendment Award for Outstanding Journalism: Best Blog Zero Hedge" Wall St. Cheat Sheet (August 4, 2009). Includes interview with co-founder "Tyler Durden". Retrieved May 12, 2011
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Joe Hagan, "The Dow Zero Insurgency" New York magazine (September 27, 2009). Retrieved May 12, 2011
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Justin Fox, Wall Streeters like conspiracy theories. Always have Time blog (October 1, 2009). Retrieved May 12, 2011
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Kaja Whitehouse, "Blogger May Have a Past" New York Post (September 2, 2009). Retrieved May 12, 2011
- ↑ http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/25/investing/zero-hedge-wall-street-blog-finance/
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Tim Fox, Interview with "Tyler Durden" on Taking Stock (MP3) Bloomberg Radio. (August 20, 2009). Retrieved December 4, 2011
- ↑ Ryan Chittum, "Insurer Alleges Fraud by Bear Stearns and JPMorgan" Columbia Journalism Review (January 25, 2011). Retrieved May 12, 2011
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Matt Taibbi, Griftopia, New York: Spiegel & Grau (2010), p. 208
Further reading
- Lawrence Delevingne, "Morgan Stanley May Sue Zero Hedge For Publishing Their Research As Its Own" Business Insider (January 28, 2010)
