Inaccurate reporting[edit]
Multiple viral anti-immigrant and Islamophobic falsehoods originate from Gatestone.[10][6][34]
In 2011[35] and 2012,[8] Gatestone published articles claiming that Europe had Muslim “no-go zones“, falsely describing them variously as “off-limits to non-Muslims”[8]and “microstates governed by Islamic Sharia law”.[35][36] The claim that there are areas in European cities that are lawless and off limits to local police or governed by Sharia is false.[8][35][36][10][37] Gatestone’s claims were picked up by many outlets, including FrontPageMag,[35] and The Washington Times.[36] The idea of no-go zones originated from Daniel Pipes,[35] who later retracted his claims.[8]
On November 18, 2016, Gatestone published an article that said the British Press had been ordered to avoid reporting the Muslim identity of terrorists by the European Union. Snopes rated the claim “false”. Snopes pointed out that the report only made a recommendation and it was issued by the Council of Europe, not the European Union.[9] Gatestone subsequently corrected the article and apologized for the error,[38] before removing it entirely from its website.
In 2017, Gatestone falsely claimed that 500 churches closed and 423 new mosques opened in London since 2001, and argued that London was being islamized and turning into “Londonistan”.[39][6] According to Snopes, Gatestone used “shoddy research and cherry-picked data.”[39] Specifically, Gatestone only counted churches that closed but not churches that opened; data for the period 2005-2012 alone show that 700 new churches opened in London.[39]
The Gatestone Institute published false articles during the 2017 German federal election.[40] A Gatestone article, shared thousands of times on social media, including by senior German far-right politicians, claimed that vacant homes were being seized in Germany to provide housing solutions for “hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.”[7] The German fact-checker Correctiv.org found that this was false; a single house was placed in temporary trusteeship, and had nothing to do with refugees whatsoever.[7] Gatestone also cross-posted a Daily Mail article, which “grossly mischaracterized crime data” concerning crime by refugees in Germany.[41]