western journal floyd brn

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SEE DENIAL

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The Western Journal was founded in 2009 by political activist Floyd Brown, who has falsely claimed Obama “hates Christianity” and “is a Muslim”.25 The Western Journal is funded by paid advertising, digital subscriptions and donations and is owned by Liftable Media, a business founded by Brown’s son Patrick.26 The Western Journal deploys an army of large Facebook pages to reach tens of millions of users.27

Described by the New York Times as “a potent online disinformation mill”, the site has a record of publishing false or misleading stories. As well as misinformation about Muslims and immigrants, it has also touted hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, as potentially effective in combating Covid.28

In 2017, Facebook curtailed the site’s reach after being publicly alerted to its misinformation.29 In 2018, Google News blacklisted the publication for alleged misleading business practices.30 In an effort to restore its reach, the Western Journal removed old misinformation articles, set up a corrections page and published editorial standards. The site also un-anonymized dozens of its Facebook pages in a bid to show transparency.31 The site has returned to Google News, runs Google Ads and continues to reach millions of readers on Facebook

This Western Journal article included in our sample citesfalse claims that climate science, including recent UN reports, “actually don’t support drastic changes to stop climate change”.32 This article has carried a Google ad for Chevrolet under its headline

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MMA

Right-wing media personalities seize on arson charge to falsely deny the role of climate change in Palisades Fire

:{SpecialPrograms Climate & Energy:(style="font-family:Merriweather"):}:

Written by Allison Fisher

Research contributions from Ilana Berger

Published10/10/25

Right-wing media personalities are using the arrest of a man charged with igniting the Palisades fire in Los Angeles — a blaze that killed a dozen people and destroyed nearly 7,000 structures in January — to deny climate change.

For example, Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed that the finding that arson started the Palisades Fire “put the final nail in the climate change coffin.”

*As the Palisades fire and the nearby Eaton fire were raging in LA, many right-wing media figures attacked those who were connecting the intensity of the blaze to climate change. The arson charge is now serving as a baffling “gotcha” moment for right-wing media figures who are misrepresenting the scientific finding that climate change contributes to, not causes, wildfires.

By attacking a claim no one is making these figures advance their campaign to undermine climate science and decouple the impacts of increasingly destructive extreme weather events from our warming planet.

## Climate change didn’t start the LA fires; it created conditions that intensified them

- While the fires were burning, UCLA climate scientist and Southern California climate expert Daniel Swain explained on MSNBC that “the level of vegetation and landscape scale dryness” was at “highly anomalous, even record-breaking levels.” Swain continued: “This year, there has been virtually no rainfall at all in the LA region, even as we head towards mid-January. And that is extremely unusual.” On top of that, “the extreme heat waves that we saw in the same region this past autumn” set the stage for intense winds to cause extensive damage. MSNBC, *Chris Jansing Reports*, [1/8/25]

- :{:{A 2023 attribution study found that “nearly all of the observed increase in” burned area in California over the past 50 years is “attributable” to human-caused climate change. Attribution studies “calculate whether, and by how much, climate change affected the intensity, frequency or impact of extremes,” according to Carbon Brief, which covers climate science. Carbon Brief, [11/18/24; The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 6/12/23]}:

- As Yale Climate Connections reported, the Palisades and Eaton fires were “intensified by severe drought and driven by winds gusting up to 100 mph (161 km/hr) from a severe Santa Ana wind event.”The report explained that “the main way that climate change worsens wildfires is by drying out vegetation. Prolonged heat turns forests and grasslands into tinder, fueling faster, more intense burns.” And in the case of the LA fires, “vegetation growth in early 2024 was enhanced by a wetter-than-average winter in Southern California. But during the summer of 2024, California experienced its hottest summer on record. This record heat, combined with near-record dryness, dried out the plentiful vegetation that grew in response to the wet winter.” Yale Climate Connections, [1/9/25]

- An attribution study of the LA fires found that climate change made them 35% more likely. As reported by NBC, “The hot, dry and windy conditions that preceded the fires were about 35% more likely because of human-caused global warming, according to a new report from the World Weather Attribution group, which analyzes the influence of global warming on extreme events. … In the case of the recent California fires, the report's authors found that although climate change played a role, it was not the sole factor.” NBC, [1/28/25]

## Right-wing media claimed arrest of alleged arsonist disproved link between climate change and the LA fires

- Newsmax host Greg Kelly played a montage of reporting connecting climate change to the LA wildfires to suggest that the alleged arson charge negates that point.Above the chyron “Many blamed L.A. fires on ‘climate change’” Kelly noted, “Yeah, well, it turned out that the guy who started that great big Palisades fire was some nut with a lighter, some liberal nut.” Newsmax, *Greg Kelly Reports*, [10/8/25]

- Newsmax host Carl Higbie undermined his argument that climate change didn’t cause the Palisades Fire by pointing out that National Geographic reported that “the fires were 35% more likely because of climate change.” Higbie went on to say, “Gavin Newsom sold us the same bill of goods about extremes. … It's not climate change. It's: One, you guys not maintaining your forest. And two, some allegedly, at this point, deranged arsonist who then called 911 to stroke his own ego to report himself.” Newsmax, *Carl Higbie Frontlines*, [10/8/25]

- Fox News host Jesse Watters similarly showed a montage of people correctly discussing climate as a contributing factor in intensifying fires before he concluded that “it wasn't global warming; it was an arsonist. And not just any arsonist — a Biden donor.” “This year, Los Angeles burned to the ground,” he said. “A dozen killed, billions in damage. The leadership was too clueless to tame the blaze. … No one took responsibility. They just kept saying, oh, it's not our fault, it's climate change. … We just found out what really sparked the fire. … It wasn't global warming; it was an arsonist. And not just any arsonist — a Biden donor.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [10/8/25]

- Fox News host Laura Ingraham mocked Democrats for making the link between climate change and the fires, saying, “Climate change caused the devastating fires that ravaged LA, said the Democrats.” She continued, “Well, today, a 29-year-old Uber driver has been arrested in connection to starting those fires.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [10/8/25]

- Right-wing influencer Robby Starbuck took aim at California Gov. Gavin Newsom, writing on X, “Didn’t you blame the fire on climate change? Stop lying.”Twitter/X, [10/9/25]

FLOYD BROWN WJC

- Right-wing news site The Western Journal wrote, “Democrats and their left-wing media lapdogs beclowned themselves after their manufactured outrage claiming ‘climate change’ had caused the Pacific Palisades fire earlier this year turned out to be a big, fat lie.”The Western Journal, [10/9/25;The New York Times,8/22/19 ]

- After news of the arrest came out, former MTV star Spencer Pratt, who has attracted right-wing fans for railing against Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, attacked the New York Times for reporting earlier this month that he “dismisses climate change as a major factor in the fires and instead seems to be looking for someone to blame.”Pratt wrote, “What was the @nytimes saying about me not believing ‘climate change’ was cause of the palisades fire?” Twitter/X, [10/9/25; The New York Times, 10/1/25]

- Bonchie, a writer for the right-wing site Red State, said on X that “we got months of ‘climate change’ crap from the left, and yet again the fire turned out to be set by a human.”“And they’ll do the same thing the next time because climate change is a religion, not an observation of evidence,” he also wrote. Twitter/X, [10/8/25; Red State, accessed 10/9/25]

- CJ Pearson, former co-chair of the Republican National Committee Youth Advisory Council, wrote on X: “BREAKING: The DOJ just announced the arrest of an arsonist responsible for the Palisades fire. Remember when the left assured us for months that climate change was to blame?” Twitter/X, [10/8/25]

- Bongino Inc., the media company founded by former right-wing pundit and current FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, posted:“BREAKING: Police have arrested the ‘climate change’ responsible for the deadly Palisades Fire in Los Angeles. His name is Jonathan Rinderknecht.” Facebook, [10/8/25]

- Blaze Media founder Glenn Beck wrote on Facebook, “Palisades Fire ‘climate change’ narrative crumbles after arson arrest.” Facebook, [10/8/25]

- Climate change denier Steve Milloy complained on X that “WaPo still tags the story as ‘Climate.’”Twitter/X, [10/8/25, AAP Factcheck, 1/23/23]

- Right-wing podcaster Eric Matheny wrote on X: “Weren’t we told that the Palisades fire was the result of climate change? No. It was an arsonist.” Twitter/X, [10/8/25]

### Right-wing media push Trump's false claim that California water policies are hurting efforts to suppress LA fires

01/10/25 1:47 PM EST

### Right-wing media insist climate change has nothing to do with LA wildfires despite a clear connection

01/15/25 8:04 PM EST

### Right-wing media figures baselessly claim LA wildfires are burning out of control because the fire chief is an LGBTQ woman who supports DEI

01/09/25

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mma 8 24

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Western Journal’s network of 22 pages shared over 4,000 posts, earning over 320,000 interactions. Pages in the network repeatedly amplified articles from the Western Journal, including an article about border patrol allegedly killing someone near the border. The pages amplified the article, writing, “A single click in the distance sealed his fate,” and, “This fatal surprise caught him totally off-guard.”

The Western Journal’s network also amplified an article pushing the false narrative that Vice President Kamala Harris was the “border czar.” The outlet’s network of pages posted the article on Facebook at least 19 times, with right-wing outlet the Independent Journal Review also republishing the article and amplifying it from its own Facebook pages.

ggl alert 11 21

https://www.minotdailynews.com/opinion/national-columnists/2021/11/climate-democracy-dies-in-darkness/

tim graham

British leftist group calling itself the Center for Countering Digital Hate has issued a report on what it calls the “Toxic Ten,” which are so-called fringe websites spreading “climate change denial.” The ten include our group,the Media Research Center, as well as Breitbart, The Daily Wire, Townhall Media, Newsmax, The Washington Times and The Western Journal.

So, any challenge to Greenpeace climate-crackdown orthodoxy is now classified as “toxic” and “digital hate.”

Their solution? To press Facebook and Google to “stop monetizing” these conservative sites, stop allowing them to buy ads and to “comprehensively label” their climate reporting as misinformation. You don’t have to prove conservatives wrong. Just “comprehensively label” them as false.

Once again, the left wants to win debates by stopping any debate from happening. The founder of this “Digital Hate” squad is a man named Imran Ahmed, who previously co-authored the book “The New Serfdom: The Triumph of Conservative Ideas and How to Defeat Them,” with Angela Eagle, a Labour Party member of Parliament.

Ahmed can already count on jihad from the “objective media.”Their British socialist friends at The Guardian awarded their report with the headline “‘Super polluters’: the top 10 publishers denying the climate crisis on Facebook.”

Offering any criticism of climate panic (and climate policy) is “super polluting.” Does this sound like science, or does it sound like political hyperbole? Naturally, Ahmed told The Guardian, “big tech is once again on the wrong side of science, truth and human progress.”

The Washington Post also provided a pliant piece headlined “Breitbart has outsized influence over climate change denial on Facebook,report says.” Tech reporter Cat Zakrzewski warned, “The far-right news and commentary site is one of just 10 publishers responsible for nearly 70 percent of interactions with climate change denial content on Facebook.”

On Twitter, Zakrzewski gushed, “The nonprofit has been effective in drawing policymakers’ attention to falsehoods on social media, as it did with its ‘disinformation dozen’ report earlier this year.”

The Post reporter avoided any evidence of “falsehoods” by engaging with conservative articles. She blithely wrote that, “For years, Facebook has faced pressure to issue a broad ban on climate misinformation,” and that somehow doesn’t strike her as distasteful censorship.

My column on ClimateDepot founder Marc Morano’s book “Green Fraud” was pictured under the Daily Wire section of the report. The MRC section is illustrated with a Joseph Vazquez article on NewsBusters about … Marc Morano. He’s apparently Digital Hater No. 1.

In my Morano column, I noted that the climate panic lobby is never held accountable for failed predictions of doom from decades ago. In one PBS series called “Race to Save the Planet,” Meryl Streep claimed, “By the year 2000 — that’s less than 10 years away — the earth’s climate will be warmer than it’s been in over 100,000 years. If we don’t do something, there’ll be enormous calamities in a very short time.”

In 2021, that can be defined as climate misinformation.

But panic helps Democrats sell a crackdown.The Post story quotedSen. Sheldon “Whites Only” Whitehousecomplaining, “Facebook and other social media companies make money when they send users down rabbit holes of climate change denial. That’s a very dangerous business model for the future of the planet.”

Apparently, the “business model” is this: Only the leftists get to talk on climate policy; everyone else should be suppressed. No one is allowed to question the failed predictions and overwrought “solutions” of climate experts like Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The Washington Post should embrace their business model with the slogan “Climate Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

https://www.**newsweek**.com/2016/12/16/floyd-brown-maestro-media-manipulation-528591.html

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From Willie Horton to Western Journalism: Floyd Brown's Career in Media Manipulation

BY JONATHAN KROHN ON 12/06/16

U.S.

FAKE NEWS

CITIZENS UNITED

SOCIAL MEDIA

Floyd Brown couldn't believe what he was watching. It was November 11, 1993, and NBC was doing a story about Whitewater, a failed real-estate venture involving Bill and Hillary Clinton. As one of the leaders of Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, Brown had provided sources to the network, and his colleague, David Bossie, had even guided a producer on a helicopter fly-by of the Whitewater properties in Arkansas. The conservative activist had been confident the story would make the president and first lady look bad.But as he watched the segment, he was shocked and delighted: NBC had linked Whitewater to a larger conspiracy, the death of White House aide Vincent Foster."It was [Brown and Bossie's] first success on a national news broadcast," writes James Stewart in Blood Sport, his book about the Clinton scandals. "A success even beyond their fondest expectations."

[03:30

Inside The Battle Over Fake News And "Censorship" Between Trump Supporters, The Alt-Right, Google, Facebook, Twitter]

More than two decades have passed since that NBC segment aired. The Clintons were never charged with any crimes regarding Whitewater, and two investigations ruled that Foster's death was a suicide. Brown, meanwhile, has gone on to build a media empire with his son, Patrick. The younger Brown runs the sites, while Floyd Brown helped provide the funding for them, serves as the chairman of the board of their parent company and contributes columns to WesternJournalism.com.

RELATED: Gunman was probing 'pizza gate' fake news, police say]

As of December, the Browns' sites, Conservative Tribune and Western Journalism, get approximately 32,986,786 unique visits per month, which means they together receive more monthly unique views in the U.S. than almost any adult entertainment site besides PornHub, according to the analytics site Alexa. During the 2016 election, many of their most popular stories had a pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton spin, and they were shared by prominent conservatives such as Mike Huckabee.

Critics say much of their content is, at best, misleading. While pundits spent 2016 blaming Pepe the Frog–loving trolls for sharing fake news, the Browns' sites were pumping out bogus articles claiming the FBI had proof Hillary Clinton took several trips to Jeffrey Epstein's "orgy island" and saying there was "new evidence " linking the former secretary of state to Foster's death. "Brown's sites," writes Lee Fan of the Intercept, "churn out bombastic headlines with little regard to the truth."

Not all of their stories are completely false, and that's what makes them more "dangerous" than completely fake news sites, says Judy Muller, a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California. "If you hate Hillary Clinton or you hate Barack Obama and someone dangles this kind of red meat in front of you, you're going to want to believe it. They put just enough in there to make it sound like it could have happened."

Via an email to Newsweek, Floyd Brown declined to be interviewed for this story. In a separate email, the younger Brown said his sites post legitimate news and simply offer an anti-establishment point of view.

Response from Patrick Brown by Newsweek on Scribd [long docs]

Patrick Brown

Date: Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 8:21 PMSubject: Re: Interview Request from NewsweekTo: Jonathan Krohn < jonathan.krohn@gmail.com>

Hi Jonathan,Thank you for reaching out before submitting your story.

I can see why you would want a comment from us beforepublishing such an im?ammatory and untrue statement as calling our websites "fake news" and "propaganda" is. I'dreally like to understand your speci?c reasoning behind those derogatory blanket statements and I hope you'llrealize how untrue that is.I am going to believe that you want the truth and only want to present the truth to your readers. I respect that, andwe have the same commitment to the truth here at Liftable Media. So I'd like to tell you the truth about our company,and I hope that you take it for what it is; me reaching out in good faith and I hope that you will take it in that spirit.1) Floyd Brown, my father, doesn't run Liftable Media.

My name is Patrick Brown, and I'm President, Founder, andCEO of Liftable Media, and I run Liftable Media. My father Floyd Brown is one minority owner, along with myself andothers. He currently is CEO of Anthem Broadcasting, the owner of USA Radio Network. While Liftable Media has anownership stake in Anthem Broadcasting, they are run as essentially separate companies, with some crosspromotion and sharing of certain resources. For example, a parallel might be the way NBC runs separately fromComcast Inc. Floyd does give me advice from time to time and serves on our board, but most of the advice he givesme directly revolves around business matters (like advice on bene?ts, investments or acquisitions and payroll).

He?nancially supported the founding of Liftable Media and personally supported me through advice and encouragement.I'll have to let him comment speci?cally on your questions, but really for the most part he's doesn't do interviews ashe feels that for the most part journalists assume the worst and lie about him.2) It would be very helpful if you could give us the speci?c articles that you are referring to, but I will try to get you comments on the stories I think you are referring to. You'll have to let us know which articles you are referring to specifically if you'd like specific comments.

Vince Foster: In regards to this

story that we do need to apologize and issue a correction for the headline. The headline mentioned a “murder case” when there was none. An explanation that there is a theory about the Clintons having political motivation for Foster’s death would have cleared up the reference but it was not in the article and therefore, as the story was written, the headline is misleading. The headline was referring to the case of public opinion and relied on a report from WND.As per our policy, our headline should have either had the word “report” in it, or explained that the phrase "Murder Case" was referring to the case of public opinion about Hillary’s involvement in the sad passing of Vince Foster. We'll be changing the headline and we are issuing an apology and a correction to the article.

Jade Helm: You don't reference any speci?c articles, so I'll just have to respond generally. Jade Helm was a two month long military exercise operated by the U.S. Military in 7 southwestern states. A map was leaked that showed some states listed as "hostile territory." We covered this issue, which many of our readers were concerned about, in summer of 2015. We believe it is the role of journalists to question government actions and government motives as a public service, especially if our audience is speci?cally concerned or fearful about an issue. I'm unsure what part of this you find objectionable, or if you are questioning the existence of Jade Helm. I think that it's also important to note that we acquired ConservativeTribune.com in the spring of 2015, and Jade Helm happened as we transitioned management of CT into Liftable Media. We are looking into whether we should do a comprehensive audit of older articles in order to make sure that they line up with our commitment to the truth.

For the most part, older article are read rarely on our sites, but everything published under our ownership should be the 100% truth, so we'll look into that.

Erick Prince: In regards to the “Orgy Island” story, it was based on an exclusive interview conducted by BreitbartNews. That interview was linked to in it's entirety from our article. Eric Prince is the founder of Blackwater and has been a public figure for years. See this New York Times Article from 2011:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/middleeast/15prince.html

. We were reporting what he said in his interview and made that very clear throughout the article.

]

The burgeoning success of the Browns' sites come as fake-news outlets have received increased scrutiny in the aftermath of Trump's electoral victory. And Floyd Brown's career is a testament to how media manipulation has evolved. As the head of Citizens United, he spent the 1990s leaking stories to mainstream outlets, backing up his work with primary sources and working hard to make sure the media trusted him. By 2008, however, his goals had changed. He spent that year's presidential campaign running online ads claiming Barack Obama was a secret Muslim.

This shift away from traditional media was informed by his experience with political advertising. In 1988, he created the infamous Willie Horton ad, which played on racist fears of black criminals to make Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee, appear soft on crime. (Brown's Citizens United later successfully challenged federal election laws before the Supreme Court.)

In 2009, he took over the Western Center for Journalism, a nonprofit that trains conservative activists to use social media. Five years later, his son Patrick established Liftable Media, Inc., which acquired the domain WesternJournalism.com. Since 2009, the site's page views have increased from 1,000 a day to often more than 1 million, according to Patrick's bio on the Western Centerwebsite. "For many years," the younger Brown writes on that site, "the same few media entities have largely...decided what is newsworthy, what is worthy of discussion, and, ultimately, what is 'true.'" Now, he says, there are alternatives.

Deciding what's news and even what's true has become increasingly difficult for Americans. Fake or misleading stories became far more prevalent during the 2016 campaign because of social media. As BuzzFeed's Craig Silverman wrote, fake-news sites garnered more interaction on Facebook than "19 major news outlets" combined during the last three months of the election.

The Browns' sites make deciphering the truth even more difficult by hedging their language and manipulating what quotes mean. In one article titled "BREAKING: American Muslims Ordered to Vote Hillary," the author uses an innocuous statement from a Muslim leader and makes it sound like something sinister. Another twists a quote by Obama to claim the president "possibly" encouraged "illegals" to vote. (He didn't.)

Muller, the University of Southern California professor, believes Western Journalism and Conservative Tribune don't necessarily fit the definition of fake news, but "they are not real news sites. They are not verifiable, independent, accountable news sites…. If [a publication] doesn't match those three things, it's something else. And in this case, I'd say that something else is propaganda."

Either way, with the election of Trump, Floyd Brown—and his websites—may soon become more influential. Bossie, once his chief pupil, was Trump's deputy campaign manager and is on the president-elect's transition team. (Bossie says he doesn't stay in touch with the elder Brown, who, in his email declining to be interviewed, said he's had no interaction with the Trump campaign during the election). But according to Bloomberg and sources close to the Trump transition team, Bossie, the man who once arranged the helicopter flyover for NBC, is now angling to become the next chairman of the Republican Party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Western_Journal

Western Journal, previously known as Western Journalism, is an American conservative^[1] news and political website based in Phoenix, Arizona. The site was founded by political consultant Floyd Brown in 2008.

History:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

Western Journalism was founded in 2008 by political consultant Floyd Brown, who also founded the Political Action Committee Citizens United^[2] and served as executive director of the Young America's Foundation.^[3]

The site was acquired by Liftable Media, Inc. in 2014,^[4] which also owns the political opinion websites Conservative Tribune and Liberty Alliance,^[4] and the human-interest website Liftable.com.^[5] It also owns and provides content to dozens of conservative Facebook pages.^[6]

Newsweek reported that the site has grown from receiving 1,000 page views a day in 2009^[2] to more than 1 million during 2016.^[7] The New York Times reported in 2019 that the site has more than 36 million readers and followers on Facebook.^[6]

Western Journalism previously stated it featured "conservative, libertarian, free market and pro-family writers and broadcasters"^[8] and seeks to provide "God-honoring" content.^[4] In practice, according to the *New York Times*, this philosophy, in which "tradition-minded patriots face ceaseless assault by anti-Christian bigots, diseased migrants and race hustlers concocting hate crimes," results in "a torrent of sensationalized, misleading, or entirely made-up stories, often aimed at Muslims and immigrants."^[6] Because of negative rulings by fact-checking sites and user trust surveys, Western Journalism was blacklisted by Google and Apple News, and by 2017 its Facebook traffic declined to near zero. The company responded by changing its name in 2018 to The Western Journal, hiring trained copy editors, and introducing a corrections page.^[6]

In a story on how fake news spreads on social media, The Intercept reported that: "Thanks to views sourced largely to referrals from Facebook, Brown's websites now outrank web traffic going to news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, and NPR, according to data compiled by Alexa".^[9]

In February 2019, The Western Journal published an article which alleged "Climate Change ‘Heat Records’ Are a Huge Data Manipulation." Scientists criticized the article, saying it was deceptive and that it contradicted existing research. The Western Journal subsequently retracted the article.^[10]

References[

^ Dagnes, Alison (2019). "Negative Objectives: The Right-Wing Media Circle and Everyone Else". In Dagnes, Alison (ed.). Super Mad at Everything All the Time. Super Mad at Everything All the Time: Political Media and Our National Anger. Springer International Publishing. pp. 167–217. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-06131-9_5. ISBN 9783030061319.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Western_Journal#cite_ref-auto1_2-1) Krohn, Jonathan (December 6, 2016). "Floyd Brown has spent decades manipulating media, from the Willie Horton ad to Conservative Tribune".
^ "About Floyd Brown". Western Journal.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Western_Journal#cite_ref-auto_4-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Western_Journal#cite_ref-auto_4-2) "Liftable Media Announces Acquisition Of TPNN, Tea Party News Network" (Press release). Liftable Media. September 2, 2015. Archived from the original on September 4, 2018.
^ Vandervort, Miranda. "Liftable.com - Lift The Best, Leave The Rest".
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Western_Journal#cite_ref-times_6-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Western_Journal#cite_ref-times_6-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Western_Journal#cite_ref-times_6-3) Confessore, Nicholas; Bank, Justin (August 21, 2019). "In the Trump Era, a Family's Fight With Google and Facebook Over Disinformation". The New York Times. Retrieved August 22, 2019.
^ "Westernjournalism.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics by Quantcast".
^ "About". Western Journalism. Archived from the original on March 15, 2015.
^ Lee Fang (November 26, 2016). "Some Fake News Publishers Just Happen to Be Donald Trump's Cronies". The Intercept.
^ "Western Journal op-ed deceives readers with completely unsupported claims". Climate Feedback. February 26, 2019. Retrieved May 18, 2019.

External links:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

Official website

Categories:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28786490/old-ratfckers-never-die-they-adapt-and-weaponize-new-technologies/

chls pierce 2019

One of the longest-lasting symptoms of the prion disease that has destroyed the higher functions of the Republican Party ever since Ronald Reagan first fed it the monkeybrains of movement conservatism in the early 1980s is the idée fixe element of advanced Atwater Syndrome. There is always something, somewhere about your political opponent that remains just out of reach. So, therefore, it is permissible to just make it up on your own. Because of this parasitical agent, old ratfcking never really dies. It just goes on manifesting itself in different ways. For example, there's David Bossie.

In the early days of the Whitewater ratfcking—which, of course, included things far beyond a failed real-estate deal pitched by crooks and grifters—Bossie began in 1992 as one of the first gumshoes to embark on The Great Penis Hunt. Once, he invaded a hospital room of a man recovering from a stroke to question his wife about whether their daughter had killed herself because she was carrying Bill Clinton's lovechild. Bossie went on to become a congressional staffer after Clinton was elected, and was so unprincipled in that capacity that he was dismissed at the behest of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, who considered Bossie's tactics to be counterproductive. Being too much of a ratfcker for Gingrich is not a concept on which I wish to dwell.

Bossie, as it happens, began his career in ratfcking for an organization called...drumroll, please...Citizens United, the brainchild of a ratfcker of even longer standing named Floyd Brown. (It was Brown who had concocted the now-legendary race-baiting Willie Horton ad aimed at 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.) By 1991, Bossie was running CU and producing vicious and meretricious "documentaries," including one called, Hillary: The Movie, the purpose of which was to torpedo Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Certain television stations refused to run ads for the movie and the Federal Election Commission ruled that the movie violated the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. CU fought the case all the way up to the Supreme Court, which, in 2010, ruled in its favor, legalizing influence-peddling throughout the land in the process.

But what of Floyd Brown, the man who brought David Bossie, as well as Willie Horton and a whole brigade of Arkansas grifters, into our politics? The New York Times is glad you asked.

In the America presented on their news and opinion website, WesternJournal.com, tradition-minded patriots face ceaseless assault by anti-Christian bigots, diseased migrants and race hustlers concocting hate crimes. Danger and outrages loom. A Mexican politician threatens the “takeover” of several American states. Police officers are kicked out of an Arizona Starbucks. Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, proposes a “$100 billion handout” for black families.

The Western Journal is not quite a household name. Until recently, some of its most prolific writers used pseudonyms. Though it publishes scores of stories each week about national politics, the company has no Washington bureau, or any other bureaus. Indeed, it rarely dispatches reporters into the world to gather news firsthand. In the parallel universe of Facebook, though, The Western Journal has been among the most popular and influential publications in America, shaping the political beliefs of more than 36 million deeply loyal readers and followers. In the three years ending in March, according to a New York Times analysis, Western Journal’s Facebook posts earned three-quarters of a billion shares, likes and comments, almost as many as the combined tally of 10 leading American news organizations that together employ thousands of reporters and editors.

The NYT story is hung primarily on the efforts of big tech companies to rein in sites like Western Journal and, thus, to stop being platforms from which ratfcking can be launched into the political ecosystem, which is an interesting enough story, especially since it is an article of paranoid faith on the right these days that they are being oppressed by The Man in Silicon Valley. (Google already has "blacklisted" WJ.) But it's the involvement of Floyd Brown that most interests me. Evidently, he's brought his son into the family ratfcking business as well.

Patrick Brown presents as an unlikely merchant of outrage. He is six-foot-three, but stoop-shouldered and soft-spoken. When expressing a thought that might draw dispute, he often shrugs uncomfortably and spreads his hands, as if to cushion the blow. Mr. Brown attended a small Christian college in Pennsylvania, and his first company, a site called Liftable.com, featured viral, often religious-themed stories meant to inspire readers rather than enrage them: Good Samaritans who saved the life of an accident victim, for example, or the actor Johnny Depp visiting a children’s hospital.

[pix tablod ]His exposure to politics came through his father, a larger-than-life veteran of Washington’s partisan wars. Floyd G. Brown reveled in the infamy surrounding his successful Horton ads, which featured mug shots of a black convicted murderer to stoke fears that the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, was soft on crime. Over the following decades, Mr. Brown would start political organizations employing the same basic formula: Apocalyptic direct-mail appeals to raise money, innuendo-laden ads to thrash Democrats and outrageous claims to draw mainstream news interest.

Apparently, young Patrick has designs on making WJ into something akin to those "respectable" conservative news sites that only hint that jihadis are storming the southern border in pick-up trucks full of gay-married opioid smugglers. He insists that Papa Floyd is largely in the background now.

"I would never want to do what he did,” Mr. Brown said. “When you make an ad or something, you are — your whole goal is to just convince someone of something, right? I mean, our goal is not that. Our No. 1 goal is to inform — truthfully.”

And I am the Tsar of all the Russias.

In March 2018, Floyd Brown declared on Fox News that Facebook had been “optimized to the thought police.” The same month, The Western Journal published an in-house study concluding that Facebook’s algorithm changes disproportionately favored liberal news outlets. (Cameron Hickey, a disinformation researcher at Harvard, told The Times he considered the study’s methodology flawed, since it did not assess the quality or reliability of the news sources, merely their purported ideological tilt.)

It should not be necessary to point out that nothing like this exists on the political left—not with this kind of depth and not with this kind of longevity. The extreme right has engaged in ratfcking across all the platforms that have emerged since Floyd Brown first encountered Willie Horton. It has shown a remarkable—if malignant—ability to adapt and to weaponize new technologies. Old ratfckers never die. They just go digital.

Floyd Brown - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Floyd_Brown

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:{:{Floyd:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Gregory :{Brown:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: (born March 10, 1961) is an American author, speaker, and media commentator. He is formerly the CEO of USA Radio Network. :{Brown:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: founded the conservative website :{Western Journalism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: in 2008.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

:{Date of birth: :(style="font-weight:bold"):}:March 10, 1961

Political activities · ‎1992 Bush Presidential ... · ‎2008 McCain-Obama ...

The Western Journal - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org › wiki › The_Western_Journal

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:{The :{Western Journal:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, previously known as :{Western Journalism:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, is an American conservative news and political website based in Phoenix, Arizona. The site was founded by political consultant :{Floyd Brown:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: in 2008.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

:{Owner(s): :(style="font-weight:bold"):}:Liftable Media, Inc

Headquarters: Phoenix, Arizona, U.S

Editor-in-chief: George Upper

In the Trump Era, a Family's Fight With Google and Facebook ...

www.nytimes.com › facebook-disinformation-floyd-brown

Aug 22, 2019 - Floyd G. Brown, right, a longtime conservative political activist, ... has determined to put The Western Journal out of business,” Floyd Brown ...