Santa Monica Observer

Santa Monica Observer is a disinformation newspaper and website. Offering generally non-controversial local fare with occasional “scoops” of national interest—which turn out to be unsupported by fact—the outlet’s strategy centers on maintaining nominal journalistic validity, allowing the occasional false story to gain traction before being challenged.

On October 27, 2022, a false story with national impact was published by the Observer. A front page article about the home attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, described the violent incident as an altercation between Mr. Pelosi and a male prostitute. No evidence, investigation or citation of facts were offered. The false story was elevated by tweets from Elon Musk.

From the LA Times: “With an official-sounding name and a professional-looking website, the Observer is one of a number of outlets masking themselves as legitimate news sources. The phenomenon has been growing and indicates how bad actors are increasingly trying to fool the public into seeing them as purveyors of accurate information.”

Other falsehoods created and published by Santa Monica Observer include claims that Hillary Clinton was actually dead and a body double debated Donald Trump, that Trump had appointed Kanye West to a high-level government job, and that Bill Gates was responsible for a polio epidemic.