Talk:Richard Medhurst

Notability - very thin from here

The most solid source I can find that is coverage of Medhurst is Press Gazette on Medhurst being detained.

Is there any other coverage of Medhurst in solid WP:RSes up to the standards required by WP:BLP that I've missed? - David Gerard (talk) 22:51, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes. -Mushy Yank. 01:06, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

The Il Fatto Quotidiano source should suffice as it also denotes him as the first journalist arrested under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. I am also opposed to the deletion of this article. NDACFan (talk) 05:36, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Reputable sources

Hey @NDACFan, you're not allowed to just decide what is and isn't reputable without a consensus. And dismissing the Rand corporation as "biased" because they took their name from a Right-Wing Libertarian figure doesn't disqualify certain points they make. This is a form of ad hominem attack, and even then this description is just an attribution. And for the record, Ukranews.com is the Ukrainian News Agency, which is cited on Wikipedia multiple times. Plus, some articles source Mythdetector.com and Fakenews.pl in their references section, the former of which is cited in the Bucha Massacre article, which is extended confirmed locked and all of its sources reviewed. So, yeah, I recommend you don't apply your own unilateral thinking and restore what I wrote while keeping it attributed. JPHC2003 (talk) 07:44, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

Here are some comments about the proposed additions to the article:

* "Medhurst has been described as pro-Russian and pro-Assad". We would need to provide the names of those who have described him as such, otherwise the sentence fits exactly into one of the examples mentioned at wp:weasel (X has been described as Y).

* "He has conducted interviews with pro-Russian figures such as Scott Ritter". Ritter is the only example mentioned in the source, so remove “such as”. The source actually describes Ritter as a “Russian agent Scott Ritter, likely recruited in Iraq in the 1990s" rather than "pro-Russian". I don’t think we should include that extreme claim in this article.

* "in February 2022 denied Russia would invade Ukraine 4 days before the invasion occurred”. This sentence involves some editorial commentary based on a primary source. It also uses the term “denied” which is a wp:word to watch. We could remove the editorial comment and say “in February 2022 he said Russia would not invade Ukraine”. However, if we regard this source as acceptable for this item, there are a lot more articles on https://www.richardmedhurst.com that we could use to develop Medhurst’s bio. Not sure that we should go down that path.

Here are some comments regarding the sources themselves:

* The NewArab source says the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) described him as pro-Palestine, so perhaps we could add that to the bio. We can also use this source in the section on his arrest which currently relies on primary sources.

* As mentioned, RAND is a biased source, but I am not against using it with attribution. The RAND source does not say much about Medhurst. Apart from a footnote, it says “Richard Medhurst is a UK journalist and a pro-Russian contributor to RT who is focused on the Middle East and “anti-imperialism” but has also authored pro-Russian content related to the Russia-Ukraine war”. Perhaps, we can also mention in Medhurst’s bio that RAND says he is focused on the Middle East and “anti-imperialism”.

* ukranews does have a Wikipage but the page does not have enough information to judge its reliability. The linked article does contain some extreme claims.

* fakenews and mythdector do not have wiki pages but fakenews is listed in the article List of fact-checking websites. Both seem to be connected to the Poynter Institute’s fact checking programme. The fakenews source makes a number of claims based on one tweet of Medhurst in which he said the banning of the Russian flag at the celebrations of the end of World War II in Berlin was Western hysteria. The mythdector source contains a number of characterisations of Medhurst, one of which is extreme. Burrobert (talk) 07:02, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

A genuine thank you to you, Burrobert—for stating the obvious. NDACFan (talk) 12:24, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Just want to say regarding what is credible or not that further back in Medhurst’s YouTube career, he used to portray himself as Mexican-American and from Los Angeles. He now presents himself as British-Syrian. I don’t think anything on www.richardmedhurst.com or any information originating from Medhurst himself should be considered a credible source without corroboration. This includes his claim that he was born in Damascus and that his mother is Syrian. Are there any sources corroborating this?

as for the claim that saying Scott Ritter was recruited by Russian intel in Iraq, this does not seem particularly “extreme” to me. Recruiting assets from foreign governments and militaries is a basic function of intelligence organizations and numerous details about Ritter’s career and timeline are consistent with the claim that he became a Russian asset during the Iraq War. 2600:1000:B195:9F62:C890:13DF:594B:1B11 (talk) 15:03, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Addendum: Paul Medhurst may be a former “UN peacekeeper” but his LinkedIn also used to identify himself as former MI6, and his academic work specializes in subterfuge, disinformation, and movement infiltration and disruption (it’s in his own CV). This means that his skillset is tailored to exploiting uncertainty and maintaining plausible deniability. It is notable to me that Richard appears to possess a similar skillset (e.g. impersonating a Mexican-American accent to create the appearance of being Mexican-American). These are dangerous people and it should be taken for granted that Richard and/or his associates are going to attempt to weaponize Wikipedia policies to keep this page as clean as they possibly can in order to help maintain plausible deniability with regard to accusations that Richard is a Russian intelligence asset. 2600:1000:B195:9F62:C890:13DF:594B:1B11 (talk) 15:12, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Source mainly just for credibility arguments: there's a half-hour youtube video Syrians Elect Assad, the West Calls Elections "Undemocratic", April 2021, yt-dlp xWutmOmenKs by Medhurst where he presents Assad as legitimately winning the 2021 Syrian presidential election. Per WP:RSPYOUTUBE, this is a generally unreliable source, but per WP:ABOUTSELF, as a source for Medhurst's opinions, it could be used if the summary is an uncontroversial brief summary about his opinions as expressed in the video. I couldn't bother to watch the whole thing, but my impression is that he didn't directly express pro-Assad opinions, he's just indirectly pro-Assad in the video by saying that a bloodthirsty dictator was legitimately elected. Best would be a source about Medhurst's views on Assad, but as a minimum, someone would have to watch the full video. Boud (talk) 19:29, 20 April 2026 (UTC)