Perhaps I have been swayed in a conversation I recently had with Breitbart. He is a silver tongue extraordinaire and a savvy new media prophet. I spoke to him earlier this year for a magazine profile I am working on and we got to discussing the kind of reporting he does, why he does it, and why he is brazen about the ideology behind it. I did not challenge him on much—the subject of the interview was not Breitbart or his methods—but some of what he told me says much about his approach to news. Here he is on why he does what he does:
“I felt a moral and ethical obligation when I started doing what I did, when I started to report things, to let people know where I’m coming from. I was inspired in America by John Stossel. He reports the facts, he’s a journalist, but he felt to he needed to represent himself truthfully as coming from a libertarian perspective. That was sort of a light bulb over my head. I was like, yeah, what’s this false neutrality? When I talk to reporters from the major newspapers and from the major networks—including George Stephanopoulos [laughing]—they’re not neutral. To pretend that they’re wearing a newly tailored hat that renders their opinions on everything neutralized when they’re collecting the story and crafting the story and delivering the story, is a laugh riot. It’s a nearly impossible act.
He had some praise for certain liberal outlets, too. He argued that neutrality was an “unnecessary affectation, because, in my mind, a left of center organ, has the capacity to report truth.”
”I read The Independent and The Guardian with a complete open mind that there are certain things that I’m not looking at. It wouldn’t dawn on me to obsess on corporations, for instance. Because in my mind, as a consumer, it’s my obligation to do my due diligence on whether or not I want to buy something from a certain company. It’s my responsibility. And so if left of center organs are going to focus their energies on isolating big corporations as their bête noir, that’s fine, it’s not my perspective, and often times I’m highly informed as a result of it.
Or as conservatives, you tend to have a healthy skepticism on big government. And in this perfect universe, transparently self-interested watchdogs have the capacity to act as a guardian of the public trust, coming from different angles. That’s the media that I want to embrace and it’s just natural that I’ve come into hardcore conflict with those that would like to keep the false reign of objectivity, to maintain that standard—it doesn’t exist.”
One of the interesting things that emerged from our chat was the degree to which Breitbart strategizes in the dissemination of scandals. He wants each to land the hardest hit possible. This is part of the reason he has teamed with ABC News on reporting the latest Weinergate developments, as reported by the Times.
But before vindication, he sought legitimacy from the same mainstream media he regularly assails. For the revelations about the congressman, Mr. Breitbart partnered with ABC News, which interviewed Ms. Broussard and published its own account of her relationship with Mr. Weiner, a Brooklyn Democrat.
Mr. Breitbart, whose credibility was damaged by his release of a selectively edited tape of Shirley Sherrod, an Agriculture Department official, said he felt ABC News could help the Weiner story rise to something more than a scandal flamed by the conservative blogosphere.
“One of the reasons I went to ABC, believe it or not, was to take this out of the partisan rancor realm,” he said in a phone interview.
New media prophet? That's a lot of pretty words to use when ratf*cker would suffice.
Drudge had his stained blue dress and has filled journalists heads with pretty little rumors and falsehoods ever since. Breitbart, disciple of Drudge started in ratf*cks and falsehoods and got this one trivial thing right. Then he spends the rest of his time whining about liberal bias while denigrating standards of objectivity.
Which is it Breitbart? Is bias a vile thing, a noble thing, or are they just things swirling around in that martinni glass you call a brain? Again, Joel, you're using a lot of pretty words when hypocrite d**chebag would do.
But then again, I'm biased... not that Breitbart should have a problem with that.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 7 Jun 2011 at 12:00 PM
Breitbart's major strategy is not journalism but to take down troublesome Democrats by any means necessary. It's unfortunate that ABC chose to collaborate with a known fabricator.
Certainly, ABC has its own checkered past -- ABC's Jeff Greenfield and Chris Vlasto were caught selectively editing a video clip from Hillary Clinton's April 22, 1994, Whitewater press conference. ABC News had omitted thirty-nine words from her actual answer, Fox News-style, Breitbart-style, to make it appear she was saying something that she didn't say. So this isn't a big leap for ABC News.
And Vlasto, of course, secretly collaborated with the Swift Boaters during the Kerry campaign to disseminate those known fabrications through the media. And then, Brian Ross, as everyone knows, has had his own problems with credibility.
Most troublesome of all, this entire incidents demonstrates starkly that the news agenda is set by conservative extremists, and what is "news" is whatever their conservative daddies say is news. The mainstream press are, in the end, docile stenographers to the conservative agenda.
I actually wish that Breitbart followed up on his conservative news ideas and produced *real* conservative journalism, like TPM is for liberals. That would be an endeavor of real value. One doesn't have to employ slimy, snotty little operatives like O'Keefe to sneak around and fabricate scandal to find folly and corruption on the liberal side. He should do like Josh Marshall did, and hire real journos, and hold to some kind of standards. He won't lack for material.
#2 Posted by James, CJR on Tue 7 Jun 2011 at 12:10 PM
@Thimbles.
A solid edit. "New media prophet" was a bit much.
#3 Posted by Joel Meares, CJR on Tue 7 Jun 2011 at 03:55 PM
Why continue with the "misleadingly edited" bit? Breitbart's story of only having that portion of the speech in his possession is much easier to buy than the "hacked," "pranked," suddenly added a bunch of new followers, hired private security firm to say taxpayer money tale that Weiner spun.
#4 Posted by Dan Collins, CJR on Tue 7 Jun 2011 at 05:56 PM
@Dan,
I agree that the theories that came up in the early days of Weinergate were far-fetched. However, I stick to the idea that we should continue to remember the Sherrod video was misleadlingly edited, because it was, whether Breitbart did it or not. If he only had a portion of the speech in hand, then he should not have made what he did of it. He should have verified that this racist-seeming segment was in fact the substance of the full speech and not a rhetorical flourish leading to a larger point. From what I can tell he did not and a massive smear resulted.
#5 Posted by Joel Meares, CJR on Wed 8 Jun 2011 at 09:01 AM
Someone explain to me the difference between Shirley Sherrod/Breitbart and Juan Williams/NPR. Both Sherrod and Williams expressed intial reactions to situations that betrayed gut anxiety/animosity toward a group. Both later in their statements/interviews acknowledged that these impulses had to be thought through and fought against. Every news outfit that cited Williams' statement of unease re 'people in Moslem garb' without including his later qualification of that statement is guilty of the same thing for which Breitbart is pilloried.
William Saletan of 'Slate' was willing to own up to the similarity of the cases. I'm sure CJR has people on its staff who have reading comprehension and A-B-C reasoning skills on a par with Saletan.
The double standard marches on. The 'right' is subjected to much greater scrutiny and higher standards than 'the left'. Look at all the ridiculous parsing of Sarah Palin's statements about Paul Revere's ride, or AP's assignment of 11 reporters to 'fact check' her memoir, vs. their assignment of zero reporters to do the same to the memoirs of President Obama.
#6 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 8 Jun 2011 at 01:11 PM
There is no similarity whatsoever between the Sherrod smear and the Juan Williams firing, except they both got fired. Nobody selectively edited Williams to make him appear racist -- he actually said what he meant and meant what he said -- Muslims scare him. The "double standard" goes more to liberals getting on their moral high horse and eating their own. A rightwinger can say anything at all, no matter how racist or obnoxious, no matter how egregious a lie, commit any crime, engage in any perversion, and the GOP rallies behind them to tamp down the controversy. And the mainstream media carries GOP water for them.
Saletan is nothing but a rightwing operative, so I don't know why Mr. Richard cites him as a credible source. Ha!
Once again with the self-pitying victimology. Someone fact-checked Palin and found her veracity and credibility wanting. Ringin' those bells for self-pity! Boo hoo.
#7 Posted by James, CJR on Wed 8 Jun 2011 at 01:43 PM
James, this is not not up to your usual standard of abuse. When you complain that the 'the mainstream media carries GOP water for them', are you guilty of 'self-pitying victimology', or just irony-impaired?
Saletan, like every single staff member at 'Slate', declared himself an Obama supporter in 2008. He may be 'right-wing' in your book, but the Republicans know that he's no particular friend of theirs, and in this context we are talking about simple partisanship, Repubs vs. Dems.
#8 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 9 Jun 2011 at 01:48 PM