Roosh Valizadeh
...<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">LATE ONE AFTERNOON IN JULY, I met with</span><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"> Matthew Continetti, editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">in a pizzeria on the ground floor of the Watergate—the DC office complex that stands today as a concrete brutalist monument to the most iconic journalistic triumph of the 20th century. Continetti is not a bomb-thrower by nature. He is polite and cerebral and meticulous about his diction—often pausing for several seconds to consider his words before answering a question. On the day we met,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"> </span><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">he had just come from George Washington University, where he teaches a class on the history of the intellectual conservative movement.</b><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Continetti grew up in the middle-class suburbs of northern Virginia with parents whom he describes as not “particularly political.” His conversion to conservatism came at Columbia University, while studying Plato’s Republic during an undergrad class on political philosophy. It was around this same time that he decided to pursue journalism, writing articles for the s<b>tudent newspaper as well as for a conservative national magazine called Campus</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Aspiring journalists who lean to the right often face a choice as they prepare to enter the industry: try to carve out a career in the mainstream press, or follow the well-trod path into conservative media? Continetti opted for the latter—working as an<b> intern at National Review</b> while he was attending Columbia, and becoming a star writer at The Weekly Standard after graduating. (In 2012, he<b> married Anne Kristol, the daughter of Bill Kristol, the magazine’s founder.)</b></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The site Continetti edits today contains a fair amount of trolling—a running series of Kate Upton clickbait; winking headlines like “Greatest Living President Is Also Fantastic Painter”—<b>but it has also earned a reputation for real-deal journalism</b>. Its reporters run down leads, work their sources, call for comment, and <b>issue corrections when necessary.</b> If a partisan press really is the future, we could do worse than the Free Beacon.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">I hoped Continetti might have a more optimistic outlook on the world after the mainstream media’s demise. But as we spoke, he was unremittingly bearish on the prospect that any 21st-century outlet could win the trust of a broad, diverse cross-section of news consumers. “One of the reasons there’s no common denominator in media is there’s really no common denominator in American life,” he told me. “As a general rule, we are a divided society. </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">We have very real disagreements about values, about what’s important.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">”[ --> choice of "facts"]</span></b></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I couldn’t help but interject: Shouldn’t facts be the common denominator? I asked, painfully aware that I was exhibiting the kind of journalistic sanctimony that the Free Beacon regularly ridicules.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Continetti exhaled, patiently, and shook his head. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I think the problem you describe is unsolvable,” he told me. “People are going to believe what they want. It’s not my job to tell them what to believe. It’s my job to edit a site that provides new information and <b>adds value every day.</b> Certainly, there are many people, like Howard Dean, who say it’s ‘fake news.’ But OK, I’m not going to control what Howard Dean thinks. He has every right.”<b> A smirk appeared on Continetti’s face. “And I don’t believe a word he says, either.”</b></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">IN MANY WAYS, Donald Trump was the perfect candidate to channel the conservative media—the talk radio id personified and plopped onto a debate stage. As someone whose status as a perpetually aggrieved media critic long predated his conversion to conservatism, Trump quickly discovered that rank-and-file Republican voters were an enthusiastic audience for his gripes about the press.[recycled newt debate riposte?] </span>And as Trump worked to reinvent himself as a Republican political celebrity, he <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">naturally took his cues from the popular right-wing media. His first major foray into conservative politics was as the world’s most famous “birther,” championing a conspiracy theory that was gaining steam on talk radio and right-wing blogs. Later, as a candidate, he punctuated his stump speeches with stories he’d read on <b>Breitbart </b>and parroted the talking points he’d picked up watching <b>Fox & Friends.</b></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump did face real opposition in the primaries from the conservative intelligentsia. Kristol and New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat were early and outspoken critics, while National Review published an entire anti-Trump issue in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. But those with the loudest megaphones—people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity—saw Trump’s affection for them and their tribe, and rewarded it by providing the kind of boosterism that Mitt Romney would have sold one of his sons for.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>And so, when Trump won in 2016, it wasn’t just a victory for him and his campaign. It was a coup for the conservative media, whose destructionist attitude toward the mainstream press can now be found at virtually every level—from the hosts of Fox News, to the ascendant internet personalities of the alt-right. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Nothing is grander, nothing is more glorious, nothing is more satisfying, nothing is sweeter, nothing is more validating, nothing is better for America than the death of the mainstream media’s political power,” John Nolte crowed in the Daily Wire the day after the election.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Gateway Pundit flatly declared, “The mainstream media is your enemy.” And Infowars captured the sentiment by featuring an editorial cartoon depicting right-wing media figures as asteroids hurtling toward earth where news-network dinosaurs await their “extinction.”</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In a decidedly dystopian spin on service journalism, <b>some in the conservative media have begun providing their audiences with how-to guides for finishing off the journalistic establishment. Limbaugh told his listeners they should stop consuming news from the mainstream press altogether.</b> “I’ll let you know what they’re up to,” he assured them. “And as a bonus, I’ll nuke it!<b>” Hannity urged his viewers to start targeting individual journalists—and their bosses—on social media.</b> And the alt-right blogger<b> Roosh Valizadeh has called for a coordinated campaign of bullying aimed at reporters. “Make them appear as ‘uncool’ salarymen in the eyes of the public,” he wrote. “Mock their appearance, their mannerisms, and their weaknesses.”</b></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>It would be easy to dismiss all this as performative, and ultimately harmless, trolling. But if the Trump era has taught us anything, it should be that these elements of the conservative media are not to be underestimated. In 2016, they conquered the Republican Party. Now they’re coming for the press.</b></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mainstream’s right turn cjr</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">...</div>