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Editor's summary: BuzzFeed, a media outlet and Pulitzer Prize finalist, obtained leaked emails from Breitbart News, some of which were published in Buzzfeed's roughly 9,000-word exposé of the site's inner workings. The article chronicles the rise of Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart's tech editor, and his relationship with Steve Bannon, the recent White House Chief Strategist who left the Trump administration and resumed his position as executive chairman of Breitbart News in August. It also details exchanges between Yiannopoulos and people such as Peter Thiel, Devin Saucier, and Curtis Yarvin, among others. The article shows how Breitbart "smuggled white nationalist ideas into the mainstream" by using Yiannopoulos as a go-between for white nationalists and others in his following, who provided him with story tips and constructive (?) criticism.
Vice Media has fired Mitchell Sunderland, an editor and writer for Broadly, Vice's women-focused site. Sunderland emailed Yiannopoulos and encouraged him to mock the feminist writer Lindy West. He also sent a Broadly video about the Satanic Temple and abortion rights to Tim Gionet, Yiannopoulos's tour manager, resulting in this story. Dan Lyons, a writer for the TV series Silicon Valley and author of Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, and David Auerbach, a former technology writer for Slate, also passed along news tips to Breitbart. Auerbach has vociferously denied writing the emails.
Milo Yiannopoulos responded on Thursday, mainly taking issue with a video of him singing karaoke while Richard Spencer and others raised Nazi salutes. Yiannopoulos wrote, "I have said in the past that I find humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about. Everyone who knows me has seen me make jokes about some awful things. But everyone who knows me also knows I'm not a racist. As someone of Jewish ancestry, I of course condemn racism in the strongest possible terms. I have stopped making jokes on these matters because I do not want any confusion on this subject. I disavow Richard Spencer and his entire sorry band of idiots. I have been and am a steadfast supporter of Jews and Israel. I disavow white nationalism and I disavow racism and I always have. I have severe myopia, due to a congenital eye defect, as has been widely reported and as many people know or have seen from my squinting during public speeches. In a dark bar, I did not see these hand gestures. If I'd have realized white nationalist losers were hailing me as their leader, I'd have immediately walked off stage. I stand for, as always, race-blind nationalism. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm enjoying my honeymoon with my black husband."
Broadening Brush: Alt-White, Buzzfeed Exposé!
BuzzFeed has published documentation of the direct connection of Breitbart News, the alt-right movement, and Milo Yiannopoulos to white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups:
In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that "there's no room in American society" for neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and the KKK.
But an explosive cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News proves that there was plenty of room for those voices on his website.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon's leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right — the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be "the platform for the alt-right."
The article is extensive, quoting from emails from the Breitbart organization itself.
In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted "we're not a hate site." Breitbart's media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist. And after the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Breitbart published an article explaining that when Bannon said the site welcomed the alt-right, he was merely referring to "computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand."
These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum — and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.
Sometimes, it is good to know who you are lying down with, so you will know why you have fleas. And sometimes, journalists ought to "follow the money." I highly recommend reading the article, "Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream".
Liberal collusion with Alt-right! Shocking!
Now the Salon is getting into the fray, reporting on BuzzFeed's dump of Breitbart emails and pointing out that many liberal journalists are implicated.
A recently released cache of email correspondence revealed direct collaboration between popular alt-right website Breitbart and purported white nationalists and neo-Nazis. While the revelations are damning, they are not entirely surprising to those who follow Breitbart's editorial strategies. More shocking, perhaps, is that a number of purportedly liberal journalists have also secretly colluded with Breitbart over the years.
Again, this is a lengthy article, well worth the read, that goes into detail on the relations of Breitbart News to other journalistic entities, and political extremists. One example:
The surprising journalistic connections to Yiannopoulos include David Auerbach, a tech critic who has contributed extensively to Slate and has been published in intellectual left magazines like n+1, Triple Canopy, and even the Nation, one of the most esteemed voices of the American left. Auerbach once wrote a longform piece of cultural criticism for Triple Canopy exploring how the politics of anonymous online forum culture (A-Culture, in his parlance) eventually evolved into the fusion of libertarianism and racist nationalism that we now associate with sites like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit in its prelapsarian days.
Though anonymity does not play directly into the majority of the discussions on forums associated with A-culture, it is responsible—along with the written nature of the discourse—for the characteristics that have emerged from those sites. . . . Anyone entering into an A-culture forum is likely to witness a nonstop barrage of obscenity, abuse, hostility, and epithets related to race, gender, and sexuality. Anyone objecting to this barrage will immediately attract a torrent of even greater abuse. These forums maintain an equilibrium of offense designed to drive away anyone who is not sympathetic to the general libertarian mindset.
But it does seem that Buzzfeed has stirred up a hornet's nest of buzzing, the type of thing that may even attract buzzards.
Shortly thereafter, Auerbach tweeted that he had "told [Buzzfeed editor Ariel Kaminer] that this stuff was untrue. He's currently trying to put words in my mouth." Auerbach went on to speculate that "Buzzfeed might have it in for me because I criticized Buzzfeed chair Keith Lerer for hiring 4chan's founder." "I also criticized Buzzfeed's business model in NYMag," he added. "So yeah, they're probably pissed at me."
More about sexism and male privilege than racism. Or more of a cat-fight among journalists and whatever those who work for Breitbart are. As Alice said, "Curiouser and curiouser."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 08 2017, @08:56PM (5 children)
NPR today is as corporatist whore as 'commecial' radio/media.
PBS in general is and has been for decades, as evidenced to anyone trying to get copies of Mr Roger's Neighborhood or back issues of Reading Rainbow.
Hint: Both are disney-level impossible to get because both are being kept in vaults by their family members decades later.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Sunday October 08 2017, @09:10PM (2 children)
What does that have to do with PBS? Sounds like a problem with the copyright holders. PBS doesn't get to magically violate copyright law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Rogers%27_Neighborhood#Broadcast_history [wikipedia.org]
Family Communications Inc. was renamed to The Fred Rogers Company [wikipedia.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 09 2017, @08:38AM
Some years ago, the PBS News Hour did a story on copyright. They went with their favorite format of finding two opposing experts to argue each side. Problem was, for that story the two sides were "extreme copyright" and "even more extreme copyright", with questions such as whether 75 years was long enough, and one expert saying "yes" while the other said "no". The thought that 75 years might be far too long was completely ignored. It was the most unbalanced, flagrantly fraudulent reporting I've ever seen on the News Hour, which until then I had thought a cut above.
I had thought that being, you know, publicly funded as reflected in the "Public" part of their very name, meant they might strive to put the interests of their patrons, the public, first. Nope. Their journalists closed ranks with what they evidently thought were their own, the journalists of the corporate media world and the ownership scoundrels of the MAFIAA, defending Holy Copyright from the evil pirates of the Internet Age.
Sesame Street is pretty tough to get. Much of the funding for Sesame Street comes from the public, yet they refuse to release it under a copyleft license, or to the public domain.
That's hardly all. The reporting on Latin America is routinely filtered through a corporatist lens. To hear the mainstream media tell it, those crazy Latin Americans are always ruining their economies with lurches to the political left. Cuba, Venezuela, and a bit less often Brazil are trash talked in this fashion. PBS News Hour is no exception to that tone. For a different view, I suggest reading Greg Palast and Noam Chomsky. Foreign sources (such as, possibly, Al Jazeera) also have potential. I warn you though, when you still have faith that the US system of journalism can't possibly get things too wrong because we have Freedom of Speech and competition to keep them honest, Palast and Chomsky will come across as batshit nuts when you first start reading them. Praising Hugo Chavez as the best thing that ever happened to Venezuela? WTF? But then, when you start to think maybe they aren't completely crazy, maybe they're on to something, maybe even correct, you'll feel depressed by the scope of the bias that implies in the mainstream media, I didn't want to believe the US was that dirty and corrupt.
One of the biggest blunders the mainstream media made in recent times was the reporting on the cause for going to war in Iraq in 2003. Yes, PBS News Hour was in lockstep with the rest of them. After all the carnage, to learn that there never were any Weapons of Mass Destruction, except in Saddam Hussein's imagination, was sickening. The media totally failed to keep the Bush Administration honest. Moreover, the Bush Administration didn't give a crap about facts, and really would run a massive propaganda campaign, something that wasn't appreciated enough until it was too late for a whole lot of Iraqis. And what are the Democrats doing about all that? Giving the Republicans the roasting and butt kicking they so richly deserve? No. Instead the Democrats are making leftish noises while actually practicing fascist corporatism lite, and trying to pass that off as The Left, with ample help from the mainstream media. In a sense, that makes the Republicans more honest than the Democrats! The Republicans' propaganda is clumsy and obvious. Not so the Democrats. Slick bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:41AM
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Fred Rogers approaches 1.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday October 09 2017, @12:37AM
I stopped listening to NPR about halfway through Obama's reign when I realized it was never going to call him out on the right wing GWBesque shit he was doing.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 09 2017, @05:29PM
You are right that NPR is as biased as all get-out. You're wrong about exactly what that bias is, though. Here it is in a nutshell:
"This is radio for comfortable and well-off people. When our news stories report terrible things happening, you don't need to worry, it will never affect you, it's sad but it's happening to those poor people way over on the other side of the world/country/state. We're going to read off a bunch of announcements from whoever the president is without questioning a word of it or providing anything that might cause you to question it, because if we do the government will pull that segment of funding we get from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Now, here's a pointless and uninformative interview with a justifiably obscure artistic type whose work is banal but we're going to treat like a genius for some reason."
PBS at least tries to create some entertaining and educational shows, although they've definitely fallen a long way from their bits of actual brilliance like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and Sesame Street back when Jim Henson was involved.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.