The Grayzone Editor Paid by Iranian State Media While Working for Russia's Sputnik
Wyatt Reed took Press TV payments in 2020 and 2021, while he was a Sputnik correspondent. He joined The Grayzone's staff later. The Washington Post corrected a claim that the site's leaders had been paid.
Hacked emails and internal documents from Press TV, Iran's state broadcaster, showed payments to Wyatt Reed for contributions in 2020 and 2021. In those same years he was a correspondent for Sputnik, the Russian state outlet. He joined The Grayzone's staff later, in June 2023, and became an editor there.
Joseph Menn reported the documents in the Washington Post on June 2, 2024. An early version of the story said leaders of Grayzone had received payments from Iranian media. The Post corrected that sentence. The correction says the documents show that only one of the site's editors received such payments.
Grayzone's June 6 reply said the Press TV work was public, that Reed had listed himself as a Press TV correspondent at the time, and that he had not taken payment from a government-backed outlet after joining the staff. The payments and the Sputnik job remained in the Post's corrected story.
Reed's history sits next to the founder's. The same Post story reported that Max Blumenthal, who founded Grayzone, has appeared on Russian state television and traveled to Moscow in 2015 for an RT anniversary event hosted by Vladimir Putin. Blumenthal has described that trip as paid. Reed's Press TV checks did not fund the site. What the two records share is a state broadcaster on the other side of the relationship: Iranian payments and a Russian employer for the future editor, Russian state television and a paid Moscow trip for the founder.
Grayzone has said the site is funded by readers and does not take money from governments. The documented line is narrower, and it is the one the corrected story supports. Reed was paid by Press TV while working for Sputnik, and he later held an editorial job at Grayzone.