Founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed began as a viral content experiment that combined listicles, quizzes, memes, and pop culture commentary with a growing appetite for “internet-native” news. Its early success was driven by shareable clickbait headlines and social media optimization rather than journalistic rigor. Over time, it attempted to evolve into a serious…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Daily Beast
The Daily Beast was founded in 2008 by Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, with financial backing from media conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp. IAC, chaired by Barry Diller (a longtime Hollywood and media powerbroker), has owned a wide array of digital properties including Match.com, Vimeo, Investopedia, and People Media. It also…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Discovery Now!
Discovery Now! is the kind of name that inspires wonder. With its bright visuals, trendy narration, and dynamic programming, it presents itself as a digital-age platform for “curious minds” and lifelong learners. A newer face in the media landscape, Discovery Now! has sought to blend educational content with pop culture relevance, aspiring to become a…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone magazine was once the iconic voice of the American counterculture. Founded in 1967 amid the swirl of psychedelic music, Vietnam protests, and youthful rebellion, it captured the spirit of a generation demanding freedom from “the Man.” But decades later, Rolling Stone no longer fights “the system”—it is the system, echoing the ideological demands of modern…
Media Hall of Shame Series: The Atlantic
The Atlantic carries itself as a publication of gravitas—serious, literary, urbane. It appeals to readers who see themselves as thoughtful and enlightened, citizens of the world rather than mere inhabitants of a nation. Founded in 1857 by abolitionists and intellectuals like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Atlantic has long framed itself as…
Media Hall of Shame Series: NPR
Among American media outlets, few possess the aura of quiet authority and intellectual charm quite like NPR (National Public Radio). With its calm-voiced hosts, refined music interludes, and thoughtful long-form features, NPR has cultivated a public image of credibility, civility, and sophistication. For many of its loyal listeners—especially on college campuses, in coffee shops, and…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Reuters
Among global news organizations, Reuters occupies a distinctive position. It is not known for flashy anchors, primetime punditry, or ideological screeds. Instead, Reuters wears the mantle of a straight-laced wire service, supplying raw news to newspapers, websites, financial firms, and governments around the world. In many ways, its reputation for neutrality rivals that of the…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News is often presented as the grown-up in the room: sober, data-driven, and immune to the hysterics of legacy broadcast networks. Its target audience isn’t the average voter—it’s the policymaker, the hedge fund manager, the international bureaucrat. With its vast network of reporters and global presence, Bloomberg offers financial news, economic forecasts, and business…
Media Hall of Shame Series: ABC News
ABC News, the news division of the American Broadcasting Company, is one of the most recognized and trusted names in American media. For decades, it carried an aura of dependability and respectability, largely shaped by the gravitas of figures like Peter Jennings and Barbara Walters. For many baby boomers and Gen Xers, ABC News represented…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Associated Press (AP)
The Associated Press (AP) enjoys one of the most prestigious reputations in global journalism. It’s often referred to as the “gold standard” for objective, fact-based reporting. Its wire service feeds newspapers, broadcasters, and digital platforms around the world—its content reaching more than half the globe’s population on any given day. For decades, the AP symbolized…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Jacobin
Jacobin is not your typical news outlet with a thin veneer of objectivity hiding a partisan agenda. It is, proudly and openly, a socialist publication, founded in 2010 by Bhaskar Sunkara and based in New York City. Though rooted in the United States, it draws heavily from European Marxist traditions and global Leftist thinkers. It…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Wikipedia
Wikipedia presents itself as a free, crowd-sourced online encyclopedia “that anyone can edit,” a claim that seems democratic and open-minded on the surface. However, this anonymity and openness mask an entrenched ideological ecosystem shaped not by the average contributor, but by a relatively small group of senior editors, moderators, and administrators. These gatekeepers enforce not…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Insider
Originally launched in 2007 as Business Insider, the outlet began with a focus on financial and tech news but has since expanded into a wide-ranging digital platform known simply as Insider. Under the leadership of co-founder Henry Blodget—a former Wall Street analyst banned from the securities industry for fraud—Insider quickly adopted a brash, attention-grabbing style…
Media Hall of Shame Series: TruthOut
Founded in 2001 in the wake of the disputed Bush-Gore election and the lead-up to the Iraq War, Truthout emerged as a digital nonprofit news organization with an openly left-wing, activist bent. Its stated mission is to provide “independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social justice issues,” and unlike many legacy outlets,…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Mother Jones
In the vast ecosystem of left-leaning media, Mother Jones stands out—not for balance or investigative rigor, but for its full-throated, unapologetic progressive activism. Founded in 1976 and named after the fiery union agitator Mary “Mother” Jones, the magazine was always intended to be a partisan outlet. And that’s exactly what it is: an ideological fortress…
Media Hall of Shame Series: The Guardian UK
Once regarded as the genteel voice of British liberalism, The Guardian has in recent decades transformed into one of the most aggressively ideological media outlets in the English-speaking world. It has shed the cloak of classical liberalism and donned the armor of full-spectrum progressivism: anti-capitalist, anti-nationalist, secularist, globalist, and deeply antagonistic to traditional Western values—especially…
Media Hall of Shame Series: Alternet
AlterNet is an unabashedly left‑wing digital media platform—with roots reaching back to 1987—founded by the Independent Media Institute and designed to aggregate and amplify progressive content from across the ideological ecosystem. In April 2018, it was acquired by the owners of Raw Story—John K. Byrne and Michael Rogers—who continue to operate it under AlterNet Media…
Media Hall of Shame Series: The Young Turks
The Young Turks (TYT) is an online news and commentary network founded in 2002 by Cenk Uygur, a former MSNBC contributor, and co-hosted by Ana Kasparian, among others. It began as a radio show before expanding to YouTube, becoming one of the earliest and most aggressive examples of a fully digital leftist broadcast outlet. TYT’s…
Media Hall of Shame Series: The Washington Post
For generations, The Washington Post was the gold standard of serious journalism in the American capital. With its famed exposure of the Watergate scandal and a long history of investigative work, the Post earned a reputation as the paper that held the powerful to account. It was once described as “the conscience of Washington”—a journalistic…
Media Hall of Shame Series: CBS News
CBS News holds a place of historic prestige in American journalism. For generations, it was known as the “Tiffany Network”—a reference to its polish and class. Names like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Dan Rather defined the idea of a trustworthy broadcaster for millions of Americans. Even now, CBS retains a certain aura of…