History
Breitbart News is a conservative news and opinion website founded in 2007 by Andrew Breitbart (1969–2012). He was a conservative commentator and entrepreneur “a former liberal from Los Angeles who became a conservative” wrote Jonah Engel Bromwich of the NY Times. Breitbart News under his leadership generated news coverage that was praised by the right for its populist, anti-establishment voice, on the left however, he was also accused of being a provocateur and misleading. Andrew Breitbart also co-founded the Huffington Post.
After Andrew Breitbart died in 2012, former investment banker for Goldman Sachs, Stephen Bannon became the executive chairman of Breitbart. Under Bannon the website became more nationalist and a vocal outlet of the alt-right movement. According to Sarah Posner from Mother Jones, during her interview with Bannon, he described Breitbart News as “a platform to the alt-right.” Bannon, who was chief executive of the Trump campaign, and then White House chief strategist for seven months before returning to Breitbart News, had stepped down from his position at Breitbart in 2018.
Larry Solov is the co-founder and CEO of Breitbart News and Alex Marlow serves as editor-in-chief.
Funded by / Ownership
After the death of Andrew Breitbart in 2012, Larry Solov became CEO and president of Breitbart News. In 2017, according to Politico, Larry Solov revealed the owner of Breitbart as “himself, founder Andrew Breitbart’s widow, Susie Breitbart, and the Republican mega donor family, the Mercers.” Further, Solov also made a statement that he wants “to disclose as little as possible about financial and ownership structure.”
Analysis / Bias
Breitbart consist of various sections called Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Hollywood, National Security, Tech, Sports, and Wired.
Breitbart uses sensational emotionally loaded language in their headlines such as “Obama Loses 2 Million+ Followers During Twitter Fake Account Purge.” They utilize sources such as tabloid entertainment magazine Variety, and credible sources such as Bloomberg. as well as factually mixed sources such as the Daily Mail. Under the Big Hollywood section they publish tabloid stories such as “Fashion Notes: Melania Trump is Posh and Proper for Final Day in England” utilizing fashion sources such as farfetch.com
In general, the majority of published stories favor the right and are highly pro-Trump in tone and story selection.
A factual search reveals numerous failed fact checks by IFCN Fact Checkers. Here are just a few of many as an example:
Overall, we rate Breitbart Questionable based on extreme right wing bias and publication of numerous false claims. (M. Huitsing 7/14/2018)
Source: http://www.breitbart.com/
