Post by ck4829 on Oct 7, 2017 11:42:51 GMT
Liberal journalists reportedly sent tips to Breitbart — now they’re scrambling
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.
On October 5, Buzzfeed News published Joseph Bernstein’s exclusive report detailing emails and documents internal to Breitbart News staff which detailed the relationship between the right-wing sensationalist news site and the fringe elements that kept correspondence with its former tech editor, right-wing bomb-thrower Milo Yiannopoulos.
As such, the revelations contained in Buzzfeed's report were damning on two different political axes: First, Buzzfeed refuted the notion that Breitbart was the “normal” news site it always claimed to be, by discovering more intentional connections to the white nationalist and neo-Nazi elements that the site and its lawyers persistently disavow. (As Buzzfeed wrote, “Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movement’s nastier edges, writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists.”) And second, the report suggested that some journalists had been “double-agents” for Yiannopoulos and his Breitbart cohort.
Buzzfeed reported that a number of purportedly liberal journalists sent Yiannopoulos story ideas, even asking the provocateur with an army of online trolls at his disposal to mock specific feminist figures. Since publication, those journalists have become the locus of a storm of controversy.
...
Another surprising double-agent cited in Buzzfeed’s exclusive was Mitchell Sunderland. As a staff writer at Broadly, a Vice Magazine site with a pop feminism slant, Sunderland’s missives to Yiannopoulos belie the mission of his employer. According to Buzzfeed:
“Please mock this fat feminist,” Sunderland wrote to Yiannopoulos in May 2016, along with a link to an article by the New York Times columnist Lindy West, who frequently writes about fat acceptance. And while Sunderland was Broadly’s managing editor, he sent a Broadly video about the Satanic Temple and abortion rights to [former Yiannopoulos confidante] Tim Gionet with instructions to “do whatever with this on Breitbart. It’s insane.” The next day, Breitbart published an article titled “‘Satanic Temple’ Joins Planned Parenthood in Pro-Abortion Crusade.”
Sunderland has been quiet on Twitter since the story dropped, though his employer Vice told Buzzfeed that they were “shocked and disappointed”; later in the afternoon on October 6, Mic and other publications reported that Sunderland had been fired, and was "spotted departing Vice’s offices with a box of his belongings." Throughout Friday, a crusade of angry Tweeters called for Sunderland’s ouster, as The Stranger documented in detail.
www.salon.com/2017/10/06/liberal-journalists-reportedly-sent-tips-to-breitbart-now-theyre-scrambling/
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.
On October 5, Buzzfeed News published Joseph Bernstein’s exclusive report detailing emails and documents internal to Breitbart News staff which detailed the relationship between the right-wing sensationalist news site and the fringe elements that kept correspondence with its former tech editor, right-wing bomb-thrower Milo Yiannopoulos.
As such, the revelations contained in Buzzfeed's report were damning on two different political axes: First, Buzzfeed refuted the notion that Breitbart was the “normal” news site it always claimed to be, by discovering more intentional connections to the white nationalist and neo-Nazi elements that the site and its lawyers persistently disavow. (As Buzzfeed wrote, “Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movement’s nastier edges, writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists.”) And second, the report suggested that some journalists had been “double-agents” for Yiannopoulos and his Breitbart cohort.
Buzzfeed reported that a number of purportedly liberal journalists sent Yiannopoulos story ideas, even asking the provocateur with an army of online trolls at his disposal to mock specific feminist figures. Since publication, those journalists have become the locus of a storm of controversy.
...
Another surprising double-agent cited in Buzzfeed’s exclusive was Mitchell Sunderland. As a staff writer at Broadly, a Vice Magazine site with a pop feminism slant, Sunderland’s missives to Yiannopoulos belie the mission of his employer. According to Buzzfeed:
“Please mock this fat feminist,” Sunderland wrote to Yiannopoulos in May 2016, along with a link to an article by the New York Times columnist Lindy West, who frequently writes about fat acceptance. And while Sunderland was Broadly’s managing editor, he sent a Broadly video about the Satanic Temple and abortion rights to [former Yiannopoulos confidante] Tim Gionet with instructions to “do whatever with this on Breitbart. It’s insane.” The next day, Breitbart published an article titled “‘Satanic Temple’ Joins Planned Parenthood in Pro-Abortion Crusade.”
Sunderland has been quiet on Twitter since the story dropped, though his employer Vice told Buzzfeed that they were “shocked and disappointed”; later in the afternoon on October 6, Mic and other publications reported that Sunderland had been fired, and was "spotted departing Vice’s offices with a box of his belongings." Throughout Friday, a crusade of angry Tweeters called for Sunderland’s ouster, as The Stranger documented in detail.
www.salon.com/2017/10/06/liberal-journalists-reportedly-sent-tips-to-breitbart-now-theyre-scrambling/