A right-wing video blogger who once filmed a music video dedicated to law enforcement was arrested on Saturday by the FBI after he livestreamed himself lounging in the Capitol amid the Jan. 6 insurrection. In a criminal complaint released on Saturday, the Department of Justice said that it had arrested Anthime Joseph Gionet, the far-right activist better known as “Baked Alaska,” on charges of violent entry […]
Maxwell Tani
24 posts
Politico is facing backlash on Thursday—both internally and externally—for handing over the keys to its signature news product for the day to Ben Shapiro, an oft-incendiary right-wing commentator. “We published a piece by a very prominent writer, provocateur, and podcaster. We stand by every word in there, it was very closely edited,” the outlet’s top editor Matt Kaminski said as part of his response to staffers […]
Conservative website RedState on Monday published and then retracted an article that angrily and falsely declared “Enough! There Was No Riot, Insurrection or ‘Storming!’” at the U.S. Capitol last week. “Let me be real clear. There was no riot in DC. There was no insurrection. There was no ‘storming’ of the Capitol Building,” wrote the piece’s author Mike Ford, a retired infantry office. “There was a […]
MSNBC is shedding more contributors as numerous on-air figures join President-elect Joe Biden’s transition efforts. On Tuesday, an MSNBC spokesperson confirmed that Barbara McQuade and Richard Stengel will no longer be paid contributors after both were announced as part of Biden’s agency review teams, which will help prepare the incoming administration to work with existing agencies. McQuade, a legal analyst for MSNBC/NBC News and University of […]
Glenn Greenwald officially left The Intercept on Thursday, complaining of censorship and heavy-handed editing. It was an eye-rolling moment for many at The Intercept. Multiple staffers at the outlet pointed out that, despite his objections to editing from above, Greenwald was ultimately one of the least-edited writers at the site. While the editing processes around his work varied—his lengthier, often-reported pieces tended to get editorial scrutiny, […]
The subject of a recent Joe Biden campaign ad says he and his family have faced vicious and disturbing harassment since the one-minute television spot debuted and sparked backlash from President Donald Trump’s campaign and his conservative media allies. “All I did was speak up for my employees and community, and yet this is the price my family and I have to pay?” Joe Malcoun said […]
A pro-Trump writer at the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section published a convoluted column Thursday evening asserting that newly released text messages proved that former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was involved in an alleged pay-for-play scheme with his dad and a Chinese energy company. But just hours later, Wall Street Journal reporters published their own story that seemed to emphatically dismiss the opinion piece’s […]
A local strip club could doom a business curfew in Miami implemented to curb the coronavirus pandemic in Florida’s largest county. Over the past several months, local regulations in Miami-Dade have required businesses close early in the evening, a measure county officials took with hopes of slowing the spread of coronavirus. But on Friday, a Miami-Dade judge ruled in favor of Tootsie’s strip club in Miami […]
Fox News host Greg Gutfled on Friday afternoon spun the news of Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis as the result of the president’s bravery, patriotism, and the risks he took on behalf of the country. The president and his wife revealed early Friday morning that they tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Later in the day, the president was flown to the Walter Reed Medical Center, “out […]
The teenaged kids of some of the biggest names in New York’s media elite—Chris Cuomo, George Stephanopoulos, and others—have teamed up to start an online publication bridging the traditional style of their parents’ generation and the Gen-Z focus on fighting racism and inequality at all levels of society. In July, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Lily Wolfson and Ryan Pelosky, two New York City high-school students, decided […]
The most powerful live TV moment during an NBA broadcast this week didn’t come when 21-year-old phenom Luka Dončić made history with a buzzer-beating deep three-point shot to become the youngest player to score a 40-point triple-double in the playoffs. It actually happened about 30 minutes into NBA TV’s broadcast of a first-round game five between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Orlando Magic that was no […]
Despite multiple employee deaths from the coronavirus and dozens of positive test results, telecom giant Dish Network Corporation, and one of its prominent subsidiaries Sling TV, have charged ahead with office reopenings with no potential end to the pandemic in sight. As a result, employees are terrified and disillusioned. “If I get the coronavirus because I had to be in the office during the pandemic and […]
Amid a larger cultural reckoning with race following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, employees at the historic American Kennel Club were hoping to join a number of other companies and organizations in making Juneteenth a company holiday. Instead, while the nonprofit’s staff were hard at work that day, they received a brief email: Even as the coronavirus pandemic rages on, […]
Their state and local leaders gloated over low coronavirus cases numbers, and heralded aggressive reopening plans. Supporters demanded the media apologize to them for saying reopening orders would put residents at risk for COVID-19. But now, a handful of lockdown-averse states that have seen explosive growth in coronavirus cases have begun ordering businesses to shut down again, closing beaches and bars, mandating masks, and implementing stay-at-home […]
New York Times employees are at odds over another sensitive editorial decision, marking the latest flare-up within the paper of record that has been roiled by internal strife over the past several months. Late on Monday, the science and philosophy writer who founded the blog Slate Star Codex announced that he was shutting down his widely read site over what he said was a forthcoming story […]
Employees at the music and culture site Pitchfork are staging a work stoppage in protest of what they say are anti-union initiatives taken by the publication and its parent company, magazine publisher Condé Nast. For four hours on Thursday morning, beginning at 9 a.m., Pitchfork editorial staffers will not publish new content on the website and will go dark on social media in order to draw […]
Executives at South Carolina’s largest newspaper asked staff to return to work in the office full-time despite concerns about the coronavirus. Now, there’s a COVID-19 case in the paper’s building. Multiple sources told The Daily Beast that Post and Courier higher-ups have informed staff in recent days of one confirmed case in the paper’s Charleston office. Upon learning the news, employees were horrified. “Disgusted, distraught, angry,” […]
After the editor of Bon Appétit resigned on Monday over diversity pay practices and an old photo of him in brownface, Condé Nast staffers have begun raising questions about another executive’s old social-media posts. During an all-staff meeting on Tuesday, one anonymous employee posted a question asking about Condé Nast Entertainment chief Oren Katzeff’s old tweet about sexual consent. “Wonder why CNE has a company culture […]
Two Buffalo cops were arraigned on Saturday on one count each of assault in the second degree, after they allegedly shoved a 75-year-old demonstrator during anti-police brutality protests. Martin Gugino, a longtime peace activist in the upstate New York city, hit his head on the pavement and was left on the ground as blood pooled around his head on Thursday evening. He remained in hospital in […]
Employees at Maven Media Brands, the U.S. digital-media publisher that owns outlets like Sports Illustrated and Maxim, are calling upon the company to cut ties with a Blue Lives Matter website in its portfolio. In an all-staff meeting on Friday, Maven announced that it will institute a 15-percent salary reduction across the organization as part of cost-saving measures as a result of the collapse of the […]
LinkedIn prides itself on being the highly professional, troll-free antithesis to all other social-media platforms. But on Wednesday, the company’s own internal meetings looked more like a “dumpster fire” Facebook comments section than anything on the company’s famously civil website. Earlier this week, the career networking website announced that it would hold a virtual global town hall to address the nationwide social unrest sparked by the […]
BuzzFeed News staff are taking a paycut and agreeing to share the workload in a deal to offset most of the potential employee furloughs the company planned for its editorial employees. Following the massive downturn of the advertising market in the coronavirus pandemic’s wake, numerous news media companies including BuzzFeed have cut costs with some layoffs and the cutting of employee salaries and furloughing of staff […]
When Attorney General William Barr wanted to defend a decision that thousands of the Department of Justice alumni called indefensible, he knew just the reporter to turn to. Catherine Herridge has a long history on the justice beat. She also possesses one of the rarer attributes in TV journalism: a massive mainstream platform, serving now as CBS’s senior investigative correspondent. And she has reporting roots at […]
A Democratic group has accused the Department of Homeland Security of violating federal regulations by revealing private information about immigrants to reporters at conservative news outlets. On Monday, Democracy Forward, a left-leaning anti-corruption advocacy group, sent a letter to the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties requesting that the agency open an investigation into the department’s press office. The organization said that according to […]