6

WHY THE MEDIA HATES ME

It was two weeks after the election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States, and the Deputy Prime Minister of Japan, Tarō Asō, was visibly annoyed. But he wasn’t annoyed at Donald Trump.

Speaking in Japan’s National Diet (their parliament), the famously blunt Deputy Prime Minister shot down a suggestion that the country should begin to make plans for Trump’s policies, as predicted by the American media.

“There’s no point in Japan making policy based on the guesses of American newspapers when they’re always wrong,” said Asō. “We shall just have to wait until things are decided.”¹²¹

Asō was right to be annoyed. What is a Japanese politician to do when previously trusted names in western news, like New York Times, Washington Post, BBC and CNN fail so comprehensively to describe what’s going on in American politics?

A Gallup poll conducted less than a month before the election found that American’s trust in the mainstream media had fallen to an all-time low. Just 32% said they had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in the media—the lowest figure Gallup had recorded since they began conducting the poll in 1972. Just ten years ago, the same figure stood at 50%.

Even Democrats, catered to by the media, are lukewarm on the subject. Gallup found that just 51% of them had a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media, compared to 30% of independents and 14% of Republicans—roughly the same number who supported John Kasich.

Trust in the media is in particular decline among younger people. In 2016, 26% of 18-49 year olds trusted the media, down from 43% in 2011. For the older generation (50 and over), trust only declined by six points in the same period, from 44% in 2011 to 38% in 2016.

In other words, the few people who still trust the media in America will soon be dead.

Isn’t it deliciously ironic that the children of the 1960s, that era when the young rose up against the heroic, selfless World War II generation, are now stuck in the same old jam as their grandparents? After working so hard to destroy conservative principles, they settled into a lazy complacency, foolishly believing they had won the culture war forever. Now they have to watch as their own children rise up against them in glorious rebellion, embracing the very principles they sought to destroy.

So, the children of the 70s and 80s listened to punk rock instead of Walter Cronkite? Well the children of the 2010s read 4chan and watch my live roasts of feminism instead of Anderson Cooper. Cosmic justice.

The media has no way to dig itself out of this mess. They are stuck in the biggest circle-jerk I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some big ones. Their primary goal is no longer to convey the latest information about current events to the American public, but to demonstrate their own commitment to the politically correct worldview of their peers in the metropolitan bubble.

Most of their leading lights have lost any interest in objective news reporting, of Woodward & Bernstein style investigative journalism, of speaking truth to power. Those who do are terrified of being ostracized and go along with the virtue signaling—as a result, any good journalism they eventually come out with is ignored by an increasingly disgusted, disillusioned public.

That’s why they missed the very obvious rise of Trump.

Trump and I have many of the same supporters. If the media wanted to judge where the wind was blowing, they should have paid attention to my soaring Google rankings and those of other mischievous young libertarian and conservative artists, commentators and thinkers.

The media didn’t want to see the signs. In their worldview, Mitt Romney’s failed bid for President in 2012 proved the dominance of the new Democratic coalition of urban voters and minorities. They grew drunk on the delusion of their own unassailable power.

Not every journalist working in the mainstream media failed to see the tsunami that was about to engulf the Democrats and their allies in the media elite, but those who suspected it was coming decided keeping their heads down was the best career move. A couple examples prove they likely made the right choice.

When Huffington Post blogger David Seaman published two articles for the site breaking with the left-wing and mainstream media’s self-imposed vow of silence on Hillary Clinton’s health, retribution was swift and merciless. Not only were his two articles on the subject (“Hillary’s Health Is Superb, Aside From Seizures, Lesions, Adrenaline Pens,” and “Donald Trump Challenges Hillary Clinton To Health Records Duel”) deleted, but he was fired, locked out of his editing account, and then his entire history of articles was temporarily scrubbed from the site.

Understandably miffed, Seaman took to YouTube to express his astonishment.

“Whenever a video concerning a presidential candidate’s health is viewed more than 3.5 million times, somebody under contract to The Huffington Post should be able to link out to that, especially as a journalist living in the U.S., without having their account revoked,” said Seaman. “I’ve filed hundreds of stories over my years as a journalist and pundit and I’ve never had anything like this happen.”

Seaman was not the only example. There was also Michael Tracey, a reporter for VICE whose relentless Hillary-bashing was tolerated only during the primaries, when Tracey was a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Once Clinton won her victory over Sanders, Tracey’s views were suddenly unwelcome.

Nevertheless, he persisted, repeatedly highlighting the failings of Hillary Clinton on social media in the months leading up to the election. On September 6, 2016, he published one of the election cycle’s more prescient columns: “The Mainstream Media Has a Donald J. Trump-Sized Blind Spot.” Tellingly, it wasn’t published at his home turf of VICE, but at the Daily Beast.

In his column, Tracey described how the media’s tactics were backfiring.

I can’t tell you how many ordinary folks I’ve spoken with who don’t trust that the rolling Trump outrage machine otherwise known as current mainstream media is giving them the real story. This includes people who generally dislike Trump. One representative example was a restaurant worker in Philadelphia during the Democratic Convention in July who told me that she assumes anything Trump says or does will instantly be blown out of proportion, so has decided to just ignore the coverage. For her, it’s a rational reaction to such disproportionate, all-consuming furor: She says she cannot process it all and also retain her sanity. So even if a controversy arises that is legitimately worth getting up-in-arms about, she will no longer know it.¹²²

Emphasis added is mine. Tracey was right, and the mainstream media (as well as all the National Review writers who assumed Trump would surely lose) were wrong. Not only did they fail to anticipate that Trump’s unstoppable momentum would carry him to the White House, they also likely aided the process, by crying wolf, confecting controversy and pretending to be offended and outraged so many times that the voting public simply switched off.

Presumably, Tracey’s superiors at VICE aren’t big fans of “I-told-you-so” moments, and quickly found an excuse to get rid of him after the election. They didn’t even care that his readership appeared to be growing. He had to go. Unwilling to be as blatant in their pro-Clinton bias as Huffington Post, VICE instead opted to fire Tracey after he pointed out that Lena Dunham could not have participated in the closed Democratic primary in New York because she was not registered with the party. VICE fired him for reprinting a screenshot of publicly accessible, easily searchable voter registration data.¹²³

I don’t think Tracey or Seaman will end up with their careers particularly damaged in the long-term. They were right, and the furious progressive editors who fired them were wrong. They won’t want for employment in the new media ecosystem. But in addition to creating a chilling effect in the mainstream media, where journalists decline to defy the narrative out of fear for their jobs, it also shows how committed the mainstream media is to remaining in its cycle of error. The few reporters who do see past the biases of the bubble are purged. And so, the cycle continues.

Nevertheless, I have good news for Japan’s politicians, and for anyone else wondering where to look for truth in this new age of progressive propaganda masquerading as impartial journalism. You see, as virtue signaling intensifies and the Overton window—the range of ideas acceptable in political discussion—grows ever narrower, it’s no longer just the cranks and the UFO-hunters who are left outside the mainstream. Journalists and fact-hunters who actually do know what’s going on in the world are left outside too. If you want to know when the next Donald J. Trump is coming around the corner, all you have to do is find them.

I am of course referring to myself, to my former colleagues at Breitbart, to my new comrades at MILO Inc., and to my fellow travelers in the anti-establishment press. The very people and publications that are frantically decried by the opposition as “fake news.” They don’t understand why our star is rising and theirs is falling—it’s because we’re upfront about our opinions and priorities, and are committed to reporting the stories that the discredited mainstream media routinely ignores.

We also have respect for our readers. Unlike most of the press, we don’t look down our noses at ordinary Americans.

I made many mistakes in my youth: dropping out of college, spending too much time blowing drug dealers, not resisting Father Michael’s advances, but picking journalism as a career was probably the biggest one.

It’s certainly not a path I’d advise anyone else to take, unless you fancy answering to miserable, soft-spoken nerds in plaid shirts who want you to convince the public that Islam is nothing to be worried about and “mansplaining” is a serious threat to women.

If you are a journalist, tell the truth. Your career options will be limited initially, but honesty pays off where it matters—with the public. And you don’t even have to be right-wing! I trust anti-establishment leftists like Michael Tracey far more than National Review or Red State columnists, who revealed themselves during the campaign to be little more than watered-down versions of the virtue-signaling mainstream.

The alternative media is increasingly difficult to ignore. Breitbart, for example, maintained the top spot in political news on Facebook and Twitter for most of the 2016 election year. Despite the best efforts of biased Silicon Valley CEOs to silence our leading voices, we are the ones that people want to share, and we are the ones people want to hear.

During my career as a tech journalist in Europe, I quickly learned that tech journalism is a corrupt mess populated by hacks. Then during GamerGate we learned the gaming press is a corrupt mess populated by hacks not interested in the hobby, merely in politicizing it. Now during this election I’ve learned that the entire mainstream media is a corrupt mess populated by hacks pushing the political views of those in power with zealotry and mendacity.

Just a few years ago, you’d have been laughed out of the room for saying stuff like that. Now everyone knows it’s true.

FAKE NEWS

You would expect the mainstream media to show a little humility after Trump’s victory. Instead, they opted to double down, in an ill-conceived attempt to take vengeance on those who humiliated them. Their efforts have backfired completely.

Instead of asking themselves why they lost people’s trust, the media instead asked why the people had lost trust in them. A subtle, but important difference.

The media decided that the people had been duped because they were listening to, reading, and watching—shock, horror!—alternative media. Something had to be done. But what? Well, the mainstream media could always engage with the alternative media and its arguments directly—but that would require facts, evidence, debate, open-mindedness, and other long-forgotten qualities.

So they didn’t do that.

The media could always start listening to its readers again, by reopening comment sections and engaging with what they had to say, rather than writing off all criticism as “trolling.” But that would require humility and the ability to admit that perhaps those backward losers in the flyover states knew something they didn’t.

So they didn’t do that.

In the days following the presidential election, the media seized on a new meme emerging from left-wing academics and analysts desperate for a reason to absolve them of responsibility for losing America.

That meme was “fake news”—the idea that Donald Trump had won because of the power of social media to spread misinformation. Voter’s anger at elites wasn’t legitimate, it was all because of the alternative media—sorry, I mean fake news sites—and mean-spirited lies about poor Hillary.

A few examples of genuine fake news (sites that create fake stories for clicks and ad revenue, like the sites with the extra suffix “.co”: abcnews.com.co, DrudgeReport.com.co, MSNBC.com.co) were seized upon by the media to prove the existence of a wider problem. Two false stories about high-profile endorsements of Trump (from Pope Francis and Denzel Washington) and one activist’s mistaken photo about bussed-in anti-Trump protesters in Austin, Texas were used to paint a picture of a deluded electorate.

Breitbart didn’t report on any of those stories. But, along with InfoWars, Prison Planet, The Blaze, Project Veritas, Private Eye, The Independent Journal Review, World Net Daily, and ZeroHedge, Breitbart was placed on a list compiled by a left-wing academic of so-called “fake news sites.”¹²⁴ It wasn’t just the alternative media either—even more liberal independent sites like Red State and the Daily Wire made the list.

Part of the reason why the Left was drawn so rapidly to the “fake news” meme was because it offered the hope of striking back at a freewheeling new anti-establishment media that was rapidly supplanting them.

In the age of the internet, the public has any number of independent commentators to choose from, and their soaring popularity is a testament to the media’s failure to hang on to their audience. There’s Steven Crowder, once a FOX News contributor, who now enjoys far more freedom in his widely-watched YouTube show Louder with Crowder. There’s Stefan Molyneux, whose piercing insight into the issues of the day is far more exciting and intellectually stimulating than anything Keith Olbermann or Sally Kohn has to offer. There’s Joe Rogan of the wildly successful podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, whose monthly download numbers—11 million in a single month in 2014—should terrify mainstream media.¹²⁵ And there’s also Gavin McInnes, one of the only Canadians I like. Uber-straight Gavin and I kissed at a press conference after the Orlando terrorist attack, a symbolic fuck you to radical Islam. It was the conservative version of Madonna kissing Britney at the VMAs.

The real crisis of mainstream credibility can be seen in the rise of the “alt-media,” people who were previously considered crackpots and fringe loons. The InfoWars commentators, Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson, now rack up hundreds of thousands, even millions of views with every YouTube broadcast they release. What does it say about the mainstream media’s credibility when a man known to accuse the federal government of “turning the freaking frogs gay” is on the rise, while they’re on the decline?

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are also symbols of the mainstream media’s declining power. Once upon a time, a leaker or a whistleblower would have to go to a newspaper or a broadcaster in order to get their story out. When the media is biased, this can be a problem. Remember, Newsweek passed on the story of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky: it was Matt Drudge who ended up leaking the story online.¹²⁶ Now, the map has changed: WikiLeaks will dump virtually any leaks from governments and political parties on the web, virtually uncensored. Sure, the media could just ignore them, but if they don’t spread the news, social media users will.

Now aware of the existential threat posed to his world order, even outgoing president Barack Obama got involved. According to The New Yorker, just a few days after the election, Obama was talking “obsessively” about a BuzzFeed article attacking pro-Trump fake news sites.¹²⁷ In his public statements, Obama also blamed “fake news” for the public’s lack of belief in man-made climate change.

Obama said, “The capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in wildly negative light without any rebuttal—that has accelerated in ways that much more sharply polarize the electorate.”¹²⁸ You could be forgiven for thinking he was talking about CNN.

Just how polarizing and negative are these fake news sites? Are they writing inflammatory stories about their political opponents with headlines like “This Is How Fascism Comes To America”? Oh wait no, that was The Washington Post, in an article about Donald Trump. Are they suggesting their opponents will commit genocide if elected? No, that was an op-ed in The New York Times, also about Donald Trump.

“Just say it: Trump sounds more and more like Hitler” was, again, not published on any of the sites on the left-wing “fake news” list, but on Slate, a once-respected magazine that published Christopher Hitchens.

And what about the unverified dossier claiming that the Russian government is blackmailing Donald Trump with evidence of him engaging in “perverted sexual acts” that were monitored by Russian intelligence? It was published on BuzzFeed and reported on by CNN.

Obama is right, there is a problem with hysterics and misinformation in the press—but it’s a problem of the mainstream press, not the alternative media. It’s a bit fucking rich for journalists who got absolutely everything wrong about this election, and who published biased polls assuring the public of Hillary’s victory, to start complaining after the fact about “fake news” because they lost the election.

One of the Fake News Media’s most common targets has been me. I partly forgive them for this—my daily skincare regime is more complex and at least as interesting as national events. But I don’t forgive the lies. Just Google “Milo Yiannopoulos” and the terms “alt-right” and “white supremacist” or “white nationalist” and count the number of times I’ve falsely been called these things. You’ll find articles from CNN, CBS, NBC News, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. Almost all of them issued groveling retractions, and in some cases apologies, after my team got in touch, and it became clear I was not the sort of person to let their smears stand without a fight.¹²⁹ But by that point, most people have read the story and formed their opinion. The damage is done.

A supposedly respectable publication, NPR, called me a “self-proclaimed leader of the alt-right.” Britain’s Daily Telegraph (I used to write a column for them—they’ve clearly gone downhill since I left), and Bloomberg Businessweek both called me “the face” of the alt-right, although the latter did it in so inadvertently gracious a manner that I couldn’t help but be flattered. (“The pretty, monstrous face of the alt-right,” they said). Less flattering but no less false, CNN wrote an article including me in a list of “white nationalists” and accused me of “speaking disparagingly about Jews.”

These are all mainstream, respectable publications staffed by professional journalists. The very same people that we are supposed to believe will provide the public with real, not fake news. Yet this is how they behave towards even the mildest of disagreement; a constant game of virtue-signaling and vice-signaling—telling others whom to shun by slapping the latest negative buzzword on them, and then gloating contentedly and calling themselves the “good guys.”

If the media only went after provocateurs like me that would be fine. I wind people up for a living, so I expect a little heat. But they also go after people whose contributions to society consist of more than just barbed words and fabulous hairdos. People like Martin Shkreli, whom they accused of fleecing HIV and AIDS-sufferers by raising the price of Daraprim, a drug that treats a number of relatively rare conditions associated with HIV and AIDS. Shkreli had a reason for raising the price: he wanted to fund research for a cheaper, better alternative.¹³⁰ Moreover, his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, made it clear that it was health insurers and corporations, not financially disadvantaged patients, who would be out of pocket. But that didn’t stop the media from branding Shkreli “the most hated man in America.”¹³¹ He might be no angel, but the Daraprim price-hike is only grounds for “hatred” if you’re a misinformed lefty or a mainstream journalist. They act like Regina George in Mean Girls, victimizing anyone who could be a threat to her popularity, only to discover at the end of the movie that no one actually likes her.

Having realized that the “fake news” meme was now being used to shine a light on their own failings, the mainstream media desperately tried to put the genie back in the bottle. The Washington Post released an article stating that it was “Time to retire the tainted term ‘fake news,’” complaining that conservatives were now using the label against the media.¹³² But it was too late—the media had given the world a term to describe their own failings, and we were going to use it.

Unable to face up to their problems, the metropolitan media-political bubble has opted for projection instead. So, there’s nothing for it. We have to strap them to a chair, tape their eyes open, and make them look in the mirror.

That’s why, even though it’s probably for nothing in the end, I make a point of ritually humiliating journalists who lie about me. Because if I can make them think twice about doing it to me, perhaps they’ll think twice about doing it to you. For all those lying journalists who haven’t felt my wrath yet, “I have a very particular set of skills” waiting for you. You’ll see soon enough.

A RECKONING

On November 21, as Donald Trump was preparing for his transition to office, he called some of the biggest names in American news media to Trump Tower. They expected the meeting to be about access to the Trump administration during its time in office. Instead, they received a historic dressing down; what one source at the meeting described to The New York Post as a “fucking firing squad.”

“Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful, dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ He addressed everyone in the room, calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,” the source said.

“Trump didn’t say [NBC reporter] Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate — which was Martha Raddatz, who was also in the room.”¹³³

Kellyanne Conway would go on to tell reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower that the meeting was “excellent.” I like to imagine her smirking internally as she said it. She’s my favorite.

Trump has been manipulating the media for decades with unparalleled brilliance. But I think they only really figured out they were being played in September 2016. Trump announced he was going to make a statement on the “birther” conspiracy about Barack Obama at the soft opening of his new hotel in Washington, D.C. This brought what seemed like the entirety of America’s political press corps to Trump’s doorstep. They expected he was going to say something crazy, the final wacky comment that would sink his campaign.

Instead, reporters found themselves covering the opening of a new Trump hotel, and twenty minutes of veterans arriving in front of the cameras to endorse his run for president. Finally, at the very end, Trump appeared on stage to give a two-line comment on the birther issue: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again. Thank you very much.”

The press went crazy. “I don’t know what to say here,” said CNN’s chief national correspondent, John King. “We got played again, by the [Trump] campaign.” Meanwhile, Jake Tapper, live on air, called it a “political rick-roll.” Tapper perhaps thought he was insulting Trump for engaging in the political equivalent of a prank invented by internet trolls.

Everyone else thought it was hilarious—especially me.

It was the perfect troll: it revealed suppressed truths, dismayed and entertained the public in equal measure, and gloriously humiliated a deserving target: the media.

Only Daddy could have done it.

I was one of the first major conservative commentators to back Trump. My headline, published on Breitbart, called Trump “The King of Trolling His Critics” and argued that he would be “The Internet’s Choice for President.”

At the time, few people saw the connection between Trump and internet trolling. Now, everyone sees it.

DON’T FEAR THE MEDIA

Establishment conservatives think Republicans have something to lose by taking on the media. As gamers, Breitbart, Nigel Farage, Trump and I have all proved, they don’t.

The press has unloaded everything they have against us, and what has been the result? GamerGate gathered popularity for two years, unstopped. Breitbart is one of the most popular news sources on the planet, and the most popular political news source on social media. Nigel Farage, condemned as a racist by the media, took his political party to unprecedented electoral successes and almost singlehandedly drove the Eurosceptic movement that culminated in Brexit. Donald Trump, who attracted more media smears than everyone else combined, is president.

And look at me. Other than Trump, Farage, and possibly Ann Coulter, is there anyone in the English-speaking world that the mainstream media makes more of an effort to smear and misrepresent? Look where it’s got me. I wake up every day hoping the mainstream media continues trying to destroy me. It’s doing wonders for my bank balance. Journalists think that by smearing me as a racist and sexist they are destroying my reputation. Actually, they are fueling my fame, because no one believes a word they say. Their lies and distortions heat my pool.

In an age when nobody trusts the media, taking them on makes you popular.

So I implore you to do what the media doesn’t want you to do: tell the truth bereft of politically-correct niceties. Be patriotic. Tell offensive jokes.

The media will hate you for it. They’ll call you names. They’ll try and smear your reputation. But you needn’t worry—no one is listening to them, except for a small group of their fellow blind, deaf and dumb journalists.

If I could tell my colleagues in the media four things, they would be:

1.Everyone hates you.

2.No one is afraid of you.

3.No one believes what you say.

4.Nobody owes you anything.

If every journalist in America realized those four things, their behavior would transform overnight, immeasurably for the better, and the US might finally get the fourth estate it deserves. In the meantime, all journalists are liars and frauds unless proven otherwise.

Make them earn your trust—including me.