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Frankie Goodway,
Saturday Editor
"Hi there. You may have noticed that Uncovered looks a little different this week – and that I’m not Franz Wild, the Bureau’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief. As we’re sending more of our stories directly to your inbox, we wanted to change what Uncovered brings you each week, including a round up of all the week’s stories with more of the behind-the-scenes of how we investigated and what happened next. Don’t worry, this definitely isn’t the last you’ve heard from Franz!
This week, we’ve got two stories that examine how spreading racism and Islamophobia makes money. On the one hand, Tommy Robinson, a “true believer” in a “United Kingdom” happy to take massive donations from US businessmen eager to MAGA-fy the UK. On the other, an exploration of why a devout Muslim in Pakistan could end up running a network of Islamophobic AI slop pages on Facebook. The two men could hardly be more different, but they share an industry: hate.
PS: I know this is a lot of change! Please do reply to this email with any feedback – I promise to reply to every message.
Why did racist AI slop take over our Facebook feeds? Because it makes money
Two weeks ago Niamh McIntyre and Misbah Khan revealed that another network of Facebook pages promoting hatred in the UK was actually being run from south Asia. Now she’s analysed the cottage industry that alternates nostalgia for an imagined all-white past with really vicious Islamophobia: posts calling Islam a cancer, for example, or AI-generated videos of people drowning in the English Channel. It’s all to get as much engagement as possible, and therefore a share of the revenue from the ads Meta, Facebook’s parent company, runs alongside the posts.
Inside the story
You’ll often see investigative journalists talking about how much work it took to get to a story – thousands of documents, hundreds of hours. But here, part of the scandal is how little digging it takes to unearth dozens of virulently racist accounts on Facebook. That’s work that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, could be doing in minutes, especially because they’ve got access to internal tools that easily bring these kinds of patterns to the surface. (By the way, they used to let journalists access some of those tools. Then they locked us out.)
What takes Niamh time, given she doesn’t have the inside track, is manually building up lists of co-ordinated Facebook accounts and working out who is behind them. We decided not to identify the latest man we tracked down because there was a real risk he’d face violence if he was unmasked.
⚡ Immediate impact
Before we even published the investigation, the creator in Pakistan had removed many of his Islamophobic posts out of what seemed to be genuine contrition. I can only speculate, but it may have helped that Misbah, who spoke to him, could explain exactly how his posts affected Muslims living in the UK. Meta ended up taking down the pages we flagged as well – although I can’t give the company too much credit for finally following its own rules.
Crypto stands and corporate sponsors at Tommy Robinson’s rally
Last weekend, Effie Webb went to the Unite the Kingdom rally led by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) in London, to cover the “live” performance of Danny Bones. In case you missed it, Effie exposed Danny Bones a few months ago as an AI-generated rapper created by the Node Project. They’d been paid by Advance UK to create campaign material before the Gorton and Denton by-election. Nothing about Bones is real, except, perhaps, the hatred he spews.
“Even the AI characters are on our side in this battle,” Robinson told the crowd. Well, yeah, of course he is. He was designed to be. And he’s another example of how Robinson and his colleagues are embracing technology to spread their message – and claw more cash from their supporters to fund it.
Inside the story
Before the rally, there were warnings that far-right agitators could turn the event violent. We made a risk assessment plan to ensure our reporters on the ground – we didn’t let Effie go alone – stayed safe. It covered what to wear, where to meet, even which hairstyles meant she couldn’t be grabbed if things turned ugly. In the end, the rally was a lot more subdued and corporate than anyone expected, but it’s always better to have plans in place when we need them.
Telling the human stories of overseas corruption
This week we held the last few days our in-person Voices for Transparency exhibition at the church of St Katharine Cree in London, where we’ve put faces to stories of corruption and wrongdoing enabled by overseas tax havens. It took us almost a year to bring this idea to life, and Elle Zahrouni, one of the brains behind the concept, has written up just how it happened.
⚡ Immediate impact
I manned the exhibition myself one day last week, and it was amazing guiding visitors through the stories. One woman wrote in our visitor book: “Thank you for shining a light on a dark, dark underworld I did not know existed. I am enlightened and at once empowered to know the world better.” Members of the church’s congregation – including a former MP – also gathered this week to talk about the exhibition, alongside our Enablers editor Lawrence.
The next stop for the physical exhibition? Parliament! And you can still see the digital version here.
⚡ More impact this week
Our reporters and editors (including me!) have been in Leeds this week, teaching the next generation of journalists how to investigate leads, build sources and tell great stories. Expect great things from the students at Leeds Trinity very soon.
These investigations don't just happen overnight - our team toils away for months to get to the bottom of the story, and we do it with the help of our brilliant community of Bureau Insiders. Please join us today:
🗓️ Last chance for tickets!
Join The Bureau’s editor Franz Wild in conversation with Karen Hao on Tuesday May 26
Karen Hao was the first journalist to gain full access to OpenAI, and covered its transformation from fledgling non-profit pushing artificial intelligence as a public good, to a voracious corporate giant focused on growth and control.
Karen will sign copies of her best-selling book Empire of AI after the talk
What we’ve been reading
🔴 An in depth look at why some illegal children’s homes are being paid up to £2m per child by councils bbc.co.uk
🔴 The use of banknotes is plummeting, but there’s more cash in circulation than ever before? Where is this missing money being used? (Spoiler: Crime) lrb.co.uk
🔴 A deep dive into the latest bizarre twist of President Trump’s unhinged social media: his love of AI-generated images, including turning himself into the Pope and Jesus ft.com
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