• As dissed on Fox NewS •
Shooting the Messenger
online reporting by INDependent journalist Dean Sterling Jones
“If you need someone to do great reporting about shady schemes, scams, digital media skullduggery, and disinfo, consider hiring Dean!”
— Craig Silverman, ProPublica reporter & author of Regret the Error —
“Boorish and offensive”
— Yevgeny Prigozhin, deceased Russian warlord —
Latest Posts
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SCOOP: Long Before His Book Scandal, Steven Rosenbaum Faced Accusations of AI Fabulism on Wikipedia
Read more: SCOOP: Long Before His Book Scandal, Steven Rosenbaum Faced Accusations of AI Fabulism on WikipediaREGIONAL EMMY AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR AND FILMMAKER STEVEN ROSENBAUM insists that AI-generated quotes in his 2026 book, The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality, were an ‘accident.’ But Wikipedia editing logs show that he was once accused and warned about the exact same behaviour, while potentially hiding a conflict of interest. “I’m not a regular…
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The Not-So-Great and Powerful Oz
Read more: The Not-So-Great and Powerful OzMENTALIST OZ PEARLMAN’S career is built on the claim that he can pry secrets from your mind by reading body language cues. He can’t—but after Saturday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump, he is the target of a conspiracy theory that believes his “powers” are real and were used to help stage the attack. Did Pearlman…
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Revealed: Neil Gaiman’s Anonymous Substack Defender is an Activist Monk
Read more: Revealed: Neil Gaiman’s Anonymous Substack Defender is an Activist MonkAS THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR PLOTS HIS COMEBACK AMID SEXUAL ASSAULT CLAIMS, the Internet is convinced that he’s secretly authoring an anonymous Substack he credits with absolving him. (Spoiler: He isn’t. But I tracked down the real author—who is almost as enigmatic.) “Thank you,” Gaiman wrote on his website Monday, breaking a year-long silence. While the…
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Brian Wilson: Adult/Child
Read more: Brian Wilson: Adult/ChildIn tribute to Brian Wilson, who died today aged 82, here is my 2014 review of cult classic The Beach Boys Love You, via Robin Thicke’s Paula. THE ALBUM IS PAULA. Thrown together in the midst of divorce, it is by all rights a complete stinker and a total embarrassment. And not because its subject is…
Meet the Russians
“Great read on Alexander Ionov after his recent indictment”
— Clarissa Ward, CNN’s chief international correspondent —
“A great report”
— Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show —
Recent Bylines
& Credits
About Me
Based in Northern Ireland, but work mainly in the U.S.
Bootstrapped a freelance journalism career by publishing original reporting via this blog. Former Rolling Stone/Daily Beast EIC Noah Shachtman gave me my break. I work in kitchens when not sleuthing online. Love Tom Verlaine and unusual-looking lamps.
My Work
Interested in propaganda and digital trickery.
I’ve been published by, among others, Forbes, The Guardian, BuzzFeed News, Foreign Policy, and The Daily Beast, garnering praise from the likes of CNN’s Clarissa Ward and ProPublica’s Craig Silverman. I use open-source tools to find stories such as my Snopes plagiarism exposé (click here to read).
Impact
A thorn in the side of all manner of shady characters.
My reporting has been cited by every major U.S. news outlet, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Fox News, which broadcast that I was “wasting all of [my] time“. Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin once tried to troll me and Indian police have accused me of trying to incite civil unrest.
Interviews & Selected
Media Mentions
Shooting the Messenger 