Andrew Breitbart

Andrew Breitbart
Speaking at CPAC, February 2012
Born
Andrew James Breitbart

(1969-02-01)February 1, 1969
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
DiedMarch 1, 2012(2012-03-01) (aged 43)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting placeHillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Alma materTulane University (BA)
Occupations
  • Writer
  • columnist
  • journalist
  • publisher
Years active1995–2012
Political partyRepublican
Spouse
Susannah Bean
​
(m. 1997)​
Children4
Websitewww.breitbart.com
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Andrew James Breitbart (/ˈbraɪtbɑːrt/; February 1, 1969 – March 1, 2012) was an American conservative journalist[1] and political commentator who was the founder of Breitbart News and a co-founder of HuffPost.

After helping in the early stages of HuffPost[2] and the Drudge Report,[3] Breitbart created Breitbart News, now a far-right[4] news and opinion website, which has been described as misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist by academics and journalists.[5]

Breitbart played central journalistic roles in the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, the firing of Shirley Sherrod, and the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy.[6] Commenters such as Nick Gillespie and Conor Friedersdorf have credited Breitbart with changing how people wrote about politics by "show[ing] how the Internet could be used to route around information bottlenecks imposed by official spokesmen and legacy news outlets".[7][8]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference c-span was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Breitbart.com has Drudge to thank for its success". Cnet news. November 2005. Retrieved July 29, 2009.
  3. ^ Ng, Christina. "Publisher and Author Andrew Breitbart Dead". ABC News. Retrieved August 15, 2012.
  4. ^ Multiple sources:
  5. ^ Multiple sources:
    • Higdon, Nolan (2020). The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education. University of California Press. pp. 105–109. ISBN 978-0-520-34787-8. Retrieved September 9, 2022 – via Google Books. Breitbart relied on fear-inspiring racist and xenophobic narratives that had salience with whites who were reacting to the economic anxiety over the Great Recession with racial resentment over the election of the first self-identified black president and the increase in the proportion of the US population made up of racial minorities. [...] The election of President Barack Obama saw Breitbart continue the long-standing American practice of spreading racist-laden fake news stories. For example, Breitbart stories claimed that Obama was born in Kenya and supported terrorist organizations. Breitbart's fake news stories were not only racist but xenophobic and Islamophobic
    • DiMaggio, Anthony R. (December 30, 2021). "The Trojan Horse "Conservative" Media and the Mainstreaming of Neofascistic Politics". Rising Fascism in America: It Can Happen Here. Routledge. pp. 93–97. doi:10.4324/9781003198390-3. ISBN 978-1-000-52308-9. S2CID 244786335. Retrieved September 9, 2022 – via Google Books. But an analysis of Breitbart's content demonstrates the venue's commitment to normalizing neofascistic ideology, even as it refuses to acknowledge what it is doing. As Rolling Stone identified when it ran a November 2016 profile piece, Breitbart has a troubling history of promoting misogyny, Islamophobia, homophobia, and racism. [...] Concerning black-white relations in the United states, Breitbart also has an eliminationist-style rhetoric that depicts protests of racial inequality and police brutality as a fundamental threat to the nation.
    • Bhat, Prashanth; Vasudevan, Krishnan (May 20, 2019). "National Review: Opposing "Trumpbart"". In Atkinson, Joshua D.; Kenix, Linda (eds.). Alternative Media Meets Mainstream Politics: Activist Nation Rising. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 56–57. ISBN 978-1-4985-8435-7. Retrieved September 9, 2022 – via Google Books. Third, writers at National Review took a moral high ground and accused Breitbart and Donald Trump of enthusing extremist groups associated with the alt-right, which the publication claimed were known for their misogyny, sexism, racism, and xenophobia. [...] By calling Breitbart "the homepage for peckerwood-trash racists and the white-power basement dwellers," National Review accused the far-right media outlet of paving the way for white supremacists to enter the mainstream.
    • Andersen, Robin (September 29, 2017). "Weaponizing Social Media: "The Alt-Right," the Election of Donald J. Trump, and the Rise of Ethno-Nationalism in the United States". In Andersen, Robin; de Silva, Purnaka L. (eds.). The Routledge Companion To Media and Humanitarian Action. Routledge. pp. 487–500. doi:10.4324/9781315538129-49. ISBN 9781315538129. Retrieved September 9, 2022. A key to Breitbart's success has long been the fake news modules, misinformation and propagandized narratives that form the content core of the Breitbart News website. Breitbart has carefully honed an anti-immigration, anti-Muslim online presence in a media universe complete with stories that raise fears of "white genocide".
    • Bhat, Prashanth (December 10, 2019). "Advertisements in the Age of Hyper-Partisan Media: Breitbart's #DumpKelloggs Campaign". In Gutsche, Robert E. Jr. (ed.). The Trump Presidency, Journalism, and Democracy (PDF). Routledge. pp. 192–205. ISBN 9780367891527. Retrieved September 9, 2022 – via Open Research Library. By March 2017, they have collectively purchased less than 0.5 percent of Breitbart's inventory. These agencies have listed Breitbart to their list of brand-unsafe websites because the far-right site violated their hate speech policies (Benes, 2017). [...] In the case of Breitbart, brands such as Kellogg's withdrew ads because they didn't want to be associated with a media outlet that produces racist and xenophobic content.
    • Victor, Daniel; Stack, Liam (November 14, 2016). "Stephen Bannon and Breitbart News, in Their Words". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 9, 2022. Critics, including some conservatives formerly associated with it, have denounced Breitbart in its current incarnation as a hate site steeped in misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, white nationalism and anti-Semitism.
    • Grynbaum, Michael M.; Herrman, John (August 26, 2016). "Breitbart Rises From Outlier to Potent Voice in Campaign". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 27, 2016. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
  6. ^ Dobuzinskis, Alex (March 2, 2012). "Conservative activist Andrew Breitbart dead at 43". Reuters. Retrieved February 12, 2021.
  7. ^ Gillespie, Nick (March 2, 2012). "How Andrew Breitbart changed the news". CNN.
  8. ^ Friedersdorf, Connor (March 8, 2012). "Andrew Breitbart's Legacy: Credit and Blame Where It's Due". Politics. Atlantic Media. Retrieved January 13, 2015.