Manchester local news website Manchester TV is among a slew of Russian-linked “self publishing sites” that have been unearthed in a disinformation investigation by The Press Gazette.
2Trom Media Group is behind the site, as well as the London Post, London TV, Essex TV, Essex TV Mag, Leicester TV, Midlands TV, and the Daily Brit.
The 2Trom outlets are home to large quantities of online gambling advertorials, including for the same Russian-linked group, 1xBet.
In the Manchester site’s defence, at the time of writing, its front page was home to a fair amount of local Manchester content, including stories about a housing development in Openshaw, new treatments from Manchester NHS hospitals, and summer activities from the People’s History Museum and Salford’s Hydes Brewery, although actual bylines or journalists are thin on the ground, and there was a strong PR vibe, while all contact details are in a news@ or editor@ format. The site also states on its “About” page that it is regulated by IPSO. A lead story about a UN report on returning Afghan refugees deported from neighbouring countries also appears of limited relevance, although not overtly “fake news.”
Some of the other sites are a little stranger, however. The Gazette highlights the London Post in particular for apparent deep Russian and former Soviet connections.
Articles there include local London nuggets like “How the people’s lands came to be owned by Klyachin: The Story of the Biggest Landowner of the Moscow Region” and “Three Billboards Outside Sheremetyevo, Moscow” which have cropped up over recent years, while the outlet’s coverage of figures from Russia and Central Asia has become increasingly inflammatory. One article attacks exiled Kazakh politician Mukhtar Ablyazov as a “false flag and distraction actor”, and in a now-removed article from 2023, the London Post alleged that a Russian businessman sold McDonalds Russia to a sanctioned oligarch, leading the man to accuse the London Post of running an “information campaign” against him coordinated from Russia.
An article from 2024 titled “Corruption Networks of Uzbekistan: From Washington to Tashkent” alleges that Uzbek businessman Ovik Mkrtchyan is at the heart of a “calculated web of influence designed to siphon money out of Uzbekistan”. Mkrtchyan has since filed a defamation suit against 2Trom in the English High Court. And it all appears of little relevance to your average reader in Catford.
2Trom’s main site, and several of its other outlets, state that the group is in three sets of hands: Viktor Tokarev, ‘BE Group’, and ‘Moscow Media Group’ (MMG).
According to Companies House, Tokarev is a Russian national, but he has no other identifiable online presence, and BE Group does not appear to have an online presence. Moscow Media Group has a defunct website which is linked on some of the 2Trom’s sites, and is also not big in terms of online presence – its Twitter (X) account last posted in March 2013, while its bio simply says “marketing communications.”
The Gazette did manage to track down a cached version of the site, from 2019, which revealed that MMG is, or was, a Russian PR group. Its specialisms include(d) marketing, “information campaigns”, “reputation management”, “government relations communications” and advertising, among others.
One of the MMG sub-groups, ‘MMG brainstorming’, also claims to have worked on the “implementation of large special projects, (including in co-operation with the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, and various ministries and agencies)”.
A 2024 report from Newsguard claimed that so-called “pink-slime” publications, which manifest online or in print posing as legitimate local news outlets while pushing disinformation, outnumbered real local news websites in the US.
Prolific North has contacted Manchester TV for comment.
