Hillary Clinton’s campaign says that the right-wing news website run by Donald Trump’s newly minted campaign chief trucks in “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.”
The official Twitter account of Breitbart News remains locked and unable to post, because it was used to post a video of a press conference featuring Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) and frontline doctors sharing their views and opinions on coronavirus and the medical response to the pandemic. Breitbart News’ Twitter Account Suspended It had shared video of the America’s Frontline Doctors event in Washington, D.C. Jul 31 2020 Breitbart News’ Twitter account has been suspended for violating the social media platform’s rules regarding the “spreading of misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”.
The site’s executives say that’s nuts.
But as Breitbart News has become inextricably linked to Donald Trump with the August 17 appointment of the company’s chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, to run Trump’s campaign, the question of Jews and Breitbart News has taken on new urgency.
So is the conservative news website a peddler of anti-Semitism or just a strident voice that pushes the envelope in an ever more-polarized political world? Here’s what you need to know about Breitbart News and the Jews.
- Breitbart Was Jewish
Andrew Breitbart, the conservative media provocateur who founded the site and died in 2012, was Jewish. So were many of his colleagues and successors, among them former Breitbart News editor-in-chief Joel Pollak and former Breitbart News editor-at-large Ben Shapiro (more on him later). The site has an Israel-dedicated vertical called Breitbart Jerusalem, where its coverage and opinion content are generally in line with the hawkish end of the pro-Israel spectrum
“They say that we are ‘anti-Semitic,’ though our company was founded by Jews, is largely staffed by Jews, and has an entire section dedicated to reporting on and defending the Jewish state of Israel,” Breitbart executives said in response to the Clinton campaign’s attack.
- “Renegade Jew”
Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook didn’t say why he thought Breitbart News was pushing anti-Semitic conspiracies, but he may have been referring to a recent dustup over a headline on Breitbart’s site that called anti-Trump neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol a “renegade Jew.”
The author of the piece, right-wing firebrand David Horowitz, is himself Jewish. Even so, the Anti-Defamation league at the time called the headline “inappropriate and offensive.” Writing in Slate, Michelle Goldberg argued that Breitbart was mainstreaming anti-Semitism.
”To define someone as a ‘Renegade Jew’ in a column about scheming elites written for an audience full of white nationalists is to signal to the sewers,” Goldberg wrote.
- ‘Ben, No One Hates Jewish People’
Shapiro, 32, quit Breitbart in March after the site appeared to side with the Trump campaign against a Breitbart reporter who claimed she had been assaulted by Trump’s then-campaign manager. (Local prosecutors declined to press charges against the campaign manager.)
After he quit, Shapiro was bombarded with anti-Semitic harassment on Twitter. Breitbart News responded to the harassment with an odd piece in which an author identified as “Pizza Party Ben” dismissed the notion that anti-Semitism even exists. “He has started playing the victim on Twitter and throwing around allegations of anti-semitism and racism, just like the people he used to mock,” the writer said of Shapiro. “Ben, no one hates Jewish people.”
In an August 18 op-ed in the Washington Post, Shapiro accused Bannon of turning Breitbart “into a cesspool of the alt-right,” a movement he described as “shot through with racism and anti-Semitism.”
- Anti-Semitic Caricatures are Just Like Long Hair and Rock & Roll
Milo Yiannopoulos is a senior editor at Breitbart and a leading figure in the so-called “alt-right” movement that Shapiro decries. He is perhaps best known for being permanently banned from Twitter for allegedly leading a harassment campaign against “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones,
In a long March article at Breitbart, Yainnopoulos, who identifies as having Jewish ancestry, brushed away allegations that the alt-right is anti-Semitic. He said that anti-Semitic caricatures are the “long hair and rock’n’roll” of 2016, employed mostly to “shock older generations.”
Shapiro, in his own March essay, pointed out that people who Tweet like racists are often indistinguishable from actual racists.
“When I can’t tell the difference between a David Duke tweet and a tweet from Milo’s biggest fans, that’s not my fault – that’s the fault of the person tweeting like David Duke,” Shapiro wrote.
QUESTIONABLE SOURCE
A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing to credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact-checked on a per-article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source. See all Questionable sources.
- Overall, we rate Breitbart Questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, the publication of conspiracy theories and propaganda as well as numerous false claims.
Detailed Report
Reasoning:Extreme Right, Propaganda, Conspiracy, Failed Fact Checks
Bias Rating: RIGHT
Factual Reporting: MIXED
Country: USA (45/180 Press Freedom)
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
History
Breitbart News is a conservative news and opinion website founded in 2007 by Andrew Breitbart (1969–2012). He was a conservative commentator and entrepreneur, “a former liberal from Los Angeles who became a conservative,” wrote Jonah Engel Bromwich of the NY Times. Breitbart News, under his leadership, generated news coverage that was praised by the right for its populist, anti-establishment voice on the left; however, he was also accused of being a provocateur and misleading. Andrew Breitbart also co-founded the Huffington Post.
After Andrew Breitbart died in 2012, a former investment banker for Goldman Sachs, Stephen Bannon became the Breitbart executive chairman. Under Bannon, the website became more nationalist and a vocal outlet of the alt-right movement. According to Sarah Posner from Mother Jones, during her interview with Bannon, he described Breitbart News as “a platform to the alt-right.”Bannon, who was chief executive of the Trump campaign, and then-White House chief strategist for seven months before returning to Breitbart News, had stepped down from his position at Breitbart in 2018.
Larry Solov is the co-founder and CEO of Breitbart News, and Alex Marlow serves as editor-in-chief.
In October 2018, Breitbart was banned as a reliable source in Wikipedia. Further, they were added as a reliable news source to Facebook’s new news initiative. This decision was met with harsh criticism by several media outlets, including Media Bias Fact Check.
On 7/27/2020, America’s FrontLine Doctors released a video claiming that Hydroxychloroquine cures Covid-19 and that masks are unnecessary. Conservative news outlet Breitbart published a story and their video that went viral, reaching millions. On 7/28/2020, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube removed the video due to the “doctors making false and dubious claims related to the coronavirus.”
Funded by / Ownership
After the death of Andrew Breitbart in 2012, Larry Solov became CEO and president of Breitbart News. In 2017, according to Politico, Larry Solov revealed the owner of Breitbart as “himself, founder Andrew Breitbart’s widow, Susie Breitbart, and the Republican mega-donor family, the Mercers.” Further, Solov also stated that he wants “to disclose as little as possible about financial and ownership structure.”
Analysis / Bias
Daily Caller Twitter
Breitbart consist of various sections called Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Hollywood, National Security, Tech, Sports, and Wired.
Breitbart uses sensational, emotionally loaded language in their headlines, such as “Obama Loses 2 Million+ Followers During Twitter Fake Account Purge.” They utilize sources such as tabloid entertainment magazine Variety and credible sources such as Bloomberg, and factually mixed sources such as the Daily Mail. Under the Big Hollywood section, they publish tabloid stories such as “Fashion Notes: Melania Trump is Posh and Proper for Final Day in England” utilizing fashion sources such as farfetch.com
A 2014 Pew Research Survey found that 7% of Breitbart’s audience is consistently or mostly liberal, 14% Mixed, and 79% consistently or mostly conservative. This indicates that a more conservative audience heavily prefers Breitbart.
In general, most published stories favor the right and are highly pro-Trump in tone and story selection. Many stories also promote anti-science propaganda as it pertains to Climate Change and Mask Effectiveness.
Failed Fact Checks
- Breitbart Duped by Fake News (Again) – False
- Following Joe Kennedy’s speech, Breitbart says Fall River, Mass. not built by immigrants – False
- Breitbart gets the wrong Loretta Lynch in Whitewater claim – Pants on Fire
- Did Planned Parenthood ‘Team Up’ With Satanists to Promote Abortion Rights in Missouri? – False
- Trump’s ISIS Conspiracy Theory – False
- Breitbart article baselessly claims a study of past climate invalidates human-caused climate change – False
- In Viral Video, Doctor Falsely Touts Hydroxychloroquine as COVID-19 ‘Cure’ – False
- “This virus has a cure called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax. I know you people want to talk about a mask. Hello? You don’t need (a) mask. There is a cure.” – False
- Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) contracted the Chinese coronavirus following last week’s Rose Garden event — in which President Trump announced his nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court — despite wearing a mask at the gathering. – False
- “Most extreme weather phenomena have not become more extreme, more deadly, or more destructive” – False
Overall, we rate Breitbart Questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, the publication of conspiracy theories and propaganda as well as numerous false claims. (M. Huitsing 6/18/2016) Updated (03/10/2021)
Is Breitbart Real News
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/
Breitbart News
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