American news and opinion website
Breitbart News Network (; known commonly as Breitbart News, Breitbart, or Breitbart.com) is an American far-right syndicated news, opinion, and commentary website founded in mid-2007 by American conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. Its content has been described as misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist by various academics and journalists. The site has published a number of conspiracy theories and intentionally misleading stories. Posts originating from the "Breitbart News" Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.
Initially conceived as "the "Huffington Post" of the right", "Breitbart News" later aligned with the alt-right, the European populist right, and the pan-European nationalist identitarian movement under the management of former executive chairman Steve Bannon, who declared the website "the platform for the alt-right" in 2016. "Breitbart News" became a virtual rallying spot for supporters of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The company's management, together with former staff member Milo Yiannopoulos, solicited ideas for stories from, and worked to advance and market ideas of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups and individuals. After the election, more than 2,000 organizations removed "Breitbart News" from ad buys following Internet activism campaigns denouncing the site's controversial positions. "Breitbart News" has promoted climate change denial and COVID-19 misinformation.
The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with bureaus in Texas, London, and Jerusalem. Co-founder Larry Solov is the co-owner (along with Andrew Breitbart's widow Susie Breitbart and the Mercer family) and CEO, while Alex Marlow is the editor-in-chief, Wynton Hall is managing editor, and Joel Pollak and Peter Schweizer are senior editors-at-large.
History.
2005–2012: creation and early years.
Andrew Breitbart launched "Breitbart.com" as a news aggregator in 2005. The website featured direct links to wire stories at the Associated Press, Reuters, Fox News, the "New York Post", TMZ as well as a number of other outlets. The website's initial growth was largely fueled by links from the "Drudge Report". In 2007, "Breitbart.com" launched a video blog, "Breitbart.tv".
According to co-founder Larry Solov, the two men were in agreement that the site should be "unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel" during their visit to Israel in 2007. In August 2010, Andrew Breitbart told the Associated Press that he was "committed to the destruction of the old media guard." As part of that commitment, he founded "Breitbart.com", a website designed to become "the "Huffington Post" of the right" according to "Breitbart News"'s former executive chairman, Steve Bannon. "Breitbart News" exclusively re-posted the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, the resignation of Shirley Sherrod, and the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy. Following Andrew Breitbart's death in 2012, the site was redesigned, bringing the formerly distinct "Big" websites under one umbrella website at "Breitbart.com".
Billionaire conservative activist Robert Mercer endowed "Breitbart.com" with at least $11 million in 2011.
2012–2016: after Andrew Breitbart's death.
Bannon assumes leadership.
Andrew Breitbart died in March 2012. The website hosted a number of memorials for him. Editors said they intended to carry on his legacy at the website. Following Andrew Breitbart's death, former board member Steve Bannon became executive chairman and Laurence Solov became CEO. The company also hired Joel Pollak as editor-in-chief and Alex Marlow as managing editor. An October 2012 article in "BuzzFeed News" suggested there were internal tensions in the organisation in the year after Andrew Breitbart's death as staffers battled for ownership of his legacy.
Before his death, Andrew Breitbart had begun a redesign of the "Breitbart News" website to transform it from a links-aggregator into a more tabloid-style website. The redesign was launched shortly after his death in March 2012.
In February 2014, Bannon announced the addition of approximately 12 staff members and the opening of Texas and London-based operations. The new offices were the beginning of an expansion plan that included the addition of a new regional site roughly every 90 days, with new locations to include Florida, California, Cairo, and Jerusalem. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center study, 3% of respondents got their news from "Breitbart" in a typical week, and 79% of its audience reported having political values that are right-of-center.
Under Bannon's management, "Breitbart News" aligned with the American alt-right, the European populist right, the pan-European nationalist identitarian movement, and the counter-jihad movement. Bannon declared the website "the platform for the alt-right" in 2016, but denied all allegations of racism and later stated that he rejected what he called the "ethno-nationalist" tendencies of the alt-right movement. One of Bannon's coworkers said he wasn't referring to Richard Spencer but instead to "the trolls on Reddit or 4Chan". The owners of "Breitbart News" deny that their website has any connection to the alt-right or has ever supported racist or white supremacist views. Anthony R. DiMaggio has described these denials as "gaslighting".
"Breitbart News" spokesperson Kurt Bardella stated in 2015 that the site "is a for-profit operation". The company's investors include computer scientist and hedge fund CEO Robert Mercer. Editors commented in 2015 that the site is a "private company and we don't comment on who our investors or backers are." According to the "Los Angeles Times", web traffic is vital to the company as it supports itself from advertising revenue.
Support for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
"Breitbart News" strongly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election. In July 2015, "Politico" reported that Ted Cruz "likely has the Republican presidential field's deepest relationship with the Breitbart machine." In August 2015, an article in BuzzFeed reported that several anonymous "Breitbart News" staffers claimed that Donald Trump had paid for favorable coverage on the site. The site's management strongly denied the charge. In March 2016, Lloyd Grove of "The Daily Beast" characterized the website as "Trump-friendly", writing that "Breitbart News" "regularly savages the GOP establishment, the media elite, the Washington consultant class, and the Fox News Channel."
On March 11, 2016, "Breitbart News" reporter Michelle Fields filed a battery complaint against Donald Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, alleging that Lewandowski had grabbed her and bruised her while she was attempting to ask a question at an event. After claiming that "Breitbart News"'s management was not sufficiently supportive of Fields, "Breitbart"'s editor-at-large Ben Shapiro and Fields resigned. A "Breitbart News" article published on March 14, 2016, accused Shapiro of betraying "Breitbart News"'s readers; the article was subsequently removed from the website. Editor-at-large Joel Pollak apologized for writing the article, saying he had done so in an attempt "to make light of a significant company event". The website's spokesperson Kurt Bardella also resigned following the incident, objecting to the company's handling of the incident and its favorable coverage of Trump. By March 14, several top executives and journalists at "Breitbart News" had resigned, with "The New York Times" saying that "Breitbart's unabashed embrace of Mr. Trump, particularly at the seeming expense of its own reporter, struck them as a betrayal of its mission." Former employees accused Bannon of having "turned a website founded on anti-authoritarian grounds into a de facto propaganda outlet for Mr. Trump."
On August 17, 2016, Bannon stepped down from his role as executive chairman to join the Trump campaign as its new CEO.
On August 25, Trump's opponent Hillary Clinton criticized him for hiring Bannon as his CEO in her rally in Reno, Nevada. She quoted the Southern Poverty Law Center's view that the site embraces "ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas." She also said that the "de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign represents a landmark achievement for the alt-right". She also condemned the site as "the Democratic Party's media enemy No. 1" and "racist, radical and offensive".
A 2017 study by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet &amp; Society at Harvard University found that "Breitbart News" was the most shared source by Trump supporters on Twitter during the election.
2016–present: after the 2016 election.
In November 2016, the cereal manufacturer Kellogg's announced they would no longer advertise on "Breitbart News", saying the site was not "aligned with [their] values". In response, "Breitbart" announced plans to boycott the company. "Breitbart" announced they would be willing to go to "war" with Kellogg's over its decision to remove ads from the site.
In January 2017, editor Julia Hahn resigned from "Breitbart News" to work as special assistant to president Donald Trump.
Milo Yiannopoulos, who had served as a senior editor of "Breitbart News" since 2014, resigned from the company on February 21, 2017 after a video of him making controversial statements in relation to hebephilia surfaced.
Allies of Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner complained to Trump in April 2017 after "Breitbart" published several unflattering articles about Kushner. Shortly afterwards, the site's senior editors asked staffers to stop writing stories critical of Kushner.
Bannon was appointed White House Chief Strategist in the administration of US President Donald Trump and served in that role for seven months; he was dismissed from the White House on August 17, 2017. That same day, he was again appointed executive chairman of "Breitbart News". In January 2018, "Breitbart News" announced that Bannon had stepped down from his position as executive chairman.
In October 2019, Facebook announced that "Breitbart News" would be included as a "trusted source" in its Facebook News feature alongside sources like "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post". The decision sparked controversy due to "Breitbart"'s status as a platform for the alt-right and its reputation for publishing misinformation. In October 2021, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Facebook executives resisted removing "Breitbart News" from Facebook's News Tab feature to avoid angering Donald Trump and Republican members of Congress, despite criticism from Facebook employees.
Decline in advertisers and readership.
From November 2016 to June 2017, "Breitbart"'s readership fell faster than other news sites. In the two months from April to June 2017, the site lost about 90% of its advertisers. The decline coincided with boycotts aimed at getting advertisers to stop running ads on the site. The boycotts were mainly organized by the anonymous online group Sleeping Giants, which said on June 5 that 2,200 organizations had committed to stop advertising on "Breitbart News" (and similar sites) due to its controversial positions. Soon thereafter, "Breitbart News" trimmed prominently displayed, overtly racist content and fired contributor Katie McHugh for posting Islamophobic tweets about the 2017 London Bridge attack.
By 2019, "Breitbart" had lost nearly 75% of its readership, going from 17.3 million at the beginning of 2017 to 4.6 million in May 2019.
Content and coverage.
Accuracy and ideology.
"Breitbart News" is a far-right American news, opinion, and commentary website. Some news outlets describe it as a conservative news outlet or as part of the alt-right. One of the site's objectives is to court millennial conservatives. It supported Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and political scientist Matthew Goodwin described "Breitbart News" as being "ultra-conservative" in orientation. "Breitbart News" publishes articles that critique feminism, Islam, and immigration. The site has also been associated with the counter-jihad movement, having employed anti-Muslim writers such as Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney and Robert Spencer.
In August 2017, Joel Pollak, the senior editor-at-large for "Breitbart News", described the "mission" of "Breitbart News" in this way: "#WAR has been our motto since the days of Andrew Breitbart, and we use it whenever we go to war against our three main targets, which are, in order: Hollywood and the mainstream media, number one; the Democratic Party and the institutional left, number two; and the Republican establishment in Washington, number three."
"Breitbart News" has published a number of falsehoods and conspiracy theories, as well as intentionally misleading stories, including a story that the Obama administration had supported ISIS during insurgency against the Syrian regime. It has sometimes published these misleading stories as part of an intentional strategy to manipulate media narratives via disinformation. In July 2010, Shirley Sherrod was fired from her appointed position as Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture. Her firing was largely in response to coverage in "Breitbart News" of video excerpts from her address to an event of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in March 2010, though it was later picked up by Fox News. Both NAACP and White House officials apologized for their statements after a longer version of her address was reviewed.
In April 2016, Stephen Piggott wrote in a Southern Poverty Law Center blog that the "outlet has undergone a noticeable shift toward embracing ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right" and was using "racist", "anti-Muslim" and "anti-immigrant ideas". Piggott wrote that the website was