rssWashington Times Reaches Out to Tea Partiers
Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 3:01 pm
- 21 Comments
John Solomon (marquette.edu), TheConservatives.com
At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, way back in March, people who stopped by The Washington Times’ spacious booth could pick up red glossy business card-sized advertisements that just said: TheConservatives.com.
As the year went on, TheConservatives.com remained a mystery. In June, John Solomon, the editor of The Times, did not directly answer a question from TWI about a new Times-run conservative site. “When I came to the Times a year ago,” Solomon told TWI at the time, “I relinquished control of the editorial pages, which report directly to the publisher and a separate opinion editor. Our opinion pages, of course, have a center-right voice. But the decision I made created an important firewall between a newspaper’s opinion and news machines and one I encourage other editors to follow.”
[GOP1] Behind the scenes, the Website was slowly staffing up and getting ready for an official launch. This week, TheConservatives.com got an official rollout. Solomon appeared at a Heritage Foundation luncheon to introduce conservative bloggers to this new site. Sitting on his right was Brian Faughnan, a writer for RedState.com and The Weekly Standard who does most of the management of TheConservatives.com from The Times’ newsroom. Sitting on his left was Rob Bluey, the director of online strategy for the Heritage Foundation, an adviser to the site.
“We have a lot of excitement about this project,” said Solomon. “We think it does for the conservative side what Obama tried to create with his Blackberry tether, with all those people that he activated.”
Solomon sold the new site as a way to bring the energy and distributed reporting of conservative activists into the Washington mainstream. “We’re not trying to supplant or replace RedState or Townhall,” he said. “We love those sites–they play valuable, valuable roles every day. We want to create a new medium where things from Townhall and RedState and Twitter and Facebook are all aggregating up, and the most interesting ideas from grassroots, from the meritocracy of ideas, bubble up, using technology. And then we use our relationship with The Washington Times to marry the grassroots to the leadership every day.”
The launch of this new site, coming from a newspaper with extensive access to Congress and the White House, is only the latest example of a traditionally conservative news organization putting a premium on web outreach to conservative activists. Seven months ago Fox News debuted FoxNation.com, an opinion site that’s become a home for sensationalist articles and roiling, Democrat-bashing comment sections. The network even promoted the Website by asking Republicans like Mitt Romney and Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) to endorse it. TheConservatives.com is relatively late to the party. But Solomon’s vision puts the site in a key role for conservative media, as an aggregator and amplifier for stories that might come from conservative organizations or from the activist base. In one way, it is crowding out long-standing conservative groups like Accuracy in Media — a forty-year old press-watching group that dogs mainstream reporters and networks. But in another way, it is doing what many liberals attack Fox News for doing–making sure that stories don’t die at AIM or on Facebook, instead making it into the mainstream.
In his pitch at the Heritage Foundation, Solomon made all of this explicit. The Times, he explained, played an important role in pushing stories that the White House didn’t like. “Before Andrew Breitbart did the ACORN series,” he said, “we did 47 stories about ACORN.” He explained how TheConservatives.com could run the news cycle by arguing that its “Right People” aggregator, which collects tweets and news from a small group of influential conservatives, changed the debate over Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The site was in demo mode, available to Times reporters.
“When we were demoing this, we were running Newt Gingrich as a personality,” explained Solomon. “Everything Newt Gingrich did on the social media space–on Facebook, on Twitter–was aggregating through the technology. We were sitting there–[seasoned Times reporter] Ralph Hallow was sitting alongside of me–and all of a sudden this little Twitter burst comes up from Newt, saying Sotomayor was racist. We jumped on it, we put that out there. That created, as you remember, days and days of a firestorm about whether her personal views about race and gender were biasing her views from the bench.”
Taking note on all of this was Don Irvine, the chairman of Accuracy in Media, and a regular attendee of the luncheons that Bluey organizes for conservative bloggers. A week earlier, Irvine had presided over AIM’s 40th anniversary conference. The group was founded by Irvine’s father, the economist Reed Irvine, as a dogged monitor of the press in the age when NBC, CBS and ABC defined the news for most of America. AIM’s targets shifted in the 1970s and 1980s, and during Bill Clinton’s presidency, it became best known for relentlessly pursuing theories that Vince Foster, the deputy White House counsel, was murdered. Its reputation has survived even as it has shrunken a bit. C-Span showed up to cover the entire conference, but as the day went on, most of the 80 chairs reserved for attendees emptied out. Tax forms from 2008 reveal that it took in less than $730,000 from donors that year, compared to the millions of dollars in donations that come in for the most prominent conservative press watchdog group, the Media Research Center. But its willingness to take on “fringe” topics gets AIM some attention.
“One day, in the Washington Post, when Clinton was in the White House, they had this whole diagram of the ‘right-wing media food chain,’” AIM President Don Irvine told TWI during the conference. (Reed Irvine passed away shortly after the 2004 election, and his son took the reins at AIM.) “I was surprised to see us on there, but that was because we annoyed the heck out of them. We were going after these stories that no one else would touch–Vince Foster, TWA 800. The problem was that no one was asking questions about those things.”
Jumping onto obscure or iffy causes is still what AIM does best. The organization has welcomed the Obama presidency by running multiple stories, almost all of them by AIM Report editor Cliff Kincaid, on the undying conspiracy theories about President Obama’s citizenship. And there’s some disappointment that AIM does not get more credit for jumping on stories like the past radicalism of Van Jones, the onetime green jobs czar who was pushed from his job after weeks of concentrated attacks from Fox News. But in the new media environment, what matters less is who gets credit than whether the stories break through. And thanks to Fox, they are breaking through.
“There’s a lot right with Fox News,” said Kincaid. “I think Reed Irvine’s efforts paved the way not only for talk radio, but for Fox News.”
Don Irvine concurred. “The landscape was very different before Fox,” he told TWI. “I can only imagine what would have happened had Fox been around during the Clinton years–back then, CNN and the other guys really did define the news.”
But AIM can succeed in pushing Fox to the right. In the speech that closed the conference, Kincaid claimed that he’d attended NewsCorp’s annual meeting on October 16, staring Rupert Murdoch down and telling him. “I’ve got a problem with one of your commentators, Marc Lamont Hill. I understand the need to be fair and balanced, but this man has a history of saluting cop killers.”
Hill, a professor of education and anthropology at Columbia University, moonlights as an expert on hip-hop. On Fox, said Kincaid, he was commenting on political issues “way beyond whatever expertise he might have had on rap music and breakdancing.” Kincaid found that Hill’s his Twitter page was “plastered with photos” of Assata Shakur, a former Black Panther who had gone to jail for the murder of a New Jersey police officer. “We called him the Van Jones of Fox News.” In Kincaid’s telling, the campaign and the confrontation with Murdoch got results.
“Mr. Kincaid,” he said, “I want to say that I appreciate the work that Accuracy in Media does. But that individual you mentioned, he was fired last week.”
The Washington Times op-ed page–which is completely separate from the news section–has never shied away from giving space to more extreme conservative views. With TheConservatives.com, however, it is opening up a news channel to a conservative movement still very much influenced by organizations like AIM. Asked by TWI whether he was ready for a White House or liberal backlash to the site, Solomon laughed and recalled that the Obama-Biden campaign had removed Washington Times reporters from its plane in the final stretch.
“There’ll be a site called www.TheProgressives.com as well,” said Solomon. “We’ll have it up and running in 2-3 weeks.”
According to the domain registration directory WhoIs.com, the domain name was purchased by Domain Asset Holdings of Maryland on January 25, and it is up for sale. TheConservatives.com is owned by The Washington Times. Solomon did not answer a follow-up e-mail about the new site.
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21 Comments
Pingback posted October 29, 2009 @ 3:21 pm
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Pingback posted October 29, 2009 @ 4:58 pm
[...] editorial page in Richard Miniter’s absence, the Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel reports on the paper’s new site run out of the editorial department: [...]
Comment posted October 29, 2009 @ 4:41 pm
“The Washington Times op-ed page–which is completely separate from the news section”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Pingback posted October 29, 2009 @ 6:32 pm
[...] editorial page in Richard Miniter’s absence, the Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel reports on the paper’s new site run out of the editorial department: [...]
Pingback posted October 29, 2009 @ 7:14 pm
[...] Washington Times Reaches Out to Tea Partiers – The Washington Independent.comAt this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, way back in March, people who stopped by The Washington Times’ spacious booth could pick up red glossy business card-sized advertisements that just said: TheConservatives.com . As the year [...]
Pingback posted October 29, 2009 @ 8:58 pm
[...] Washington Times Reaches Out to Tea Partiers – The Washington Independent.comAt this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, way back in March, people who stopped by The Washington Times’ spacious booth could pick up red glossy business card-sized advertisements that just said: TheConservatives.com . As the year [...]
Pingback posted October 29, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
[...] Washington Times Reaches Out to Tea Partiers – The Washington Independent.comAt this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, way back in March, people who stopped by The Washington Times’ spacious booth could pick up red glossy business card-sized advertisements that just said: TheConservatives.com . As the year [...]
Pingback posted October 30, 2009 @ 3:46 am
[...] Washington Times Reaches Out to Tea Partiers – The Washington Independent.comAt this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, way back in March, people who stopped by The Washington Times’ spacious booth could pick up red glossy business card-sized advertisements that just said: TheConservatives.com . As the year [...]
Pingback posted October 30, 2009 @ 7:54 am
[...] can also go to the Main Street Alliance Facebook page to see more coverage of Dan’s big day. Washington Times Reaches Out to Tea Partiers – washingtonindependent.com 10/29/2009 John Solomon (marquette.edu), TheConservatives.com At [...]
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[...] This website should not contain cutesy graphics, several sound clips and extremely bright colors. Washington Times Reaches Out to Tea Partiers – washingtonindependent.com 10/29/2009 John Solomon (marquette.edu), TheConservatives.com At [...]
Comment posted November 2, 2009 @ 12:57 pm
Get on the Washington Times email list to see the full extent of the crazy. I have no idea how I ended up on the list (maybe I had to sign up to comment on an article at some point?) but I'm on it and it's insane. They frequently send out emails with the disclaimer “Periodically, we receive opportunities we believe you may want to learn about. Please note that the following message does not necessarily reflect the positions of The Washington Times” but yet ALL the messages are of one particular political bent.
Examples (which I've been saving):
1) Subject “Conservatives: We Need Your Help” with an “urgent” message from the Tea Party Express along with a solicitation to contribute and join.
2) From today, subject “Breaking: Reid strong arms for health care bill” decrying Reid's support of a public option and a solicitation to contribute to Sue Lowden's campaign
3) Subject “This is a Brave Marine” denying the Haditha massacre
4) Subject “Obama's Gun-Free America” attributing HR 45 to Obama (even though it was introduced before he took office and Obama hasn't said one word about gun control) from Rep. Paul Broun and a request to join the National Association for Gun Rights
Pingback posted November 2, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
[...] easy to forget that before the Moonies put him in charge of the Washington Times, John Solomon was writing misleading, Democrat-bashing articles for the Washington Post and the [...]
Comment posted November 3, 2009 @ 6:20 pm
THE EMPIRE ITS OWN WORSE ENEMY
[A Blog worth Reading & Joining the Discussion]
Now, we had a chance to take a look at yet another column on [www.ThinkProgress.Org.], Reconstruction for the [USA] United States of America, under the Matthew Yglesias Blog. It turned out that is sort of split into two directions, well more, but it is well worth taking a peek at, the comments are pretty good, that is if anyone even reads this, which is nuts in itself, It boiled down to The American-Israeli Empire is its own worse enemy, The [EU] European Union and the Community of Nations, should look to their own defense.
[Consummate Global Rogue]
The American-Israeli Empire has come to be recognized as hands down the consummate global community of nations rogue and beyond being its own worse enemy is that of the entire global community, with its interest in profit, wealth and power, at the expense of the entire global community of nations. Not only has Germany declared the Iraq War an illegal war, those Un-Patriotic Tea Party, Americans living outside the Empire, also are declaring the entire Islamic Crescent War for Resources and Markets Illegal, caused by the stationing of Empire forces on the Saudi [Holy Soil] and/or anywhere on the Islamic Crescent. A war that has been paid for on The Red Chinese Credit Card, Don’t have a War without one. And, what did the Empire get in return, well for [$1T/€680B] One-Trillion Dollars/Six-Hundred-Eighty-Billion Euros, it has interest to pay, while The Peoples Republic of China have gained large oil concessions from Iraq, for having displacing as many as [4M] Four Million, wounding, disabling, tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens, while at the same time killing as many as [1M] One-Million. So what does the Empire do, why they just double down, and borrow another [$700B/€477B] Seven-Hundred Billion Dollars/Four-Hundred-Seventy-Seven Billion Euros.
[Empire Military Contraction]
Now, on the [700] Seven hundred some odd Empire overseas bases, in some [300] Three hundred countries especially those located within the [EU] European Union, well it seems the [EU] has little favor with the Tea Party Un-Patriotic Americans, and they feel that the [EU] is all grown up and should be out on their own, especially when it comes to their defense, and its time for the boys to come home [All of them] with the first base closings starting with the; [4] Four in Italy, [4] Four in Germany, and [3] Three in Spain and Portugal, and last but not the least the [5] Five in the [UK] United Kingdom, and not be in a rush to defend them when some tyrant threatens them, but to only become involved as it directly effects the national security of the Empire which most likely won’t exist in its present form. The other countries that this will send a cold shiver down their backs will be The Nationalist Chinese, The South Korean, and last but not least the [SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP] State of Israel.
HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN
Comment posted November 5, 2009 @ 1:42 pm
STEP’IN AND A FETCH’EN
[HOW HIGH?]
Now an article caught our eye the other day, well not so much the article which was great in itself but a picture in the article, by Gregor Peter Schmitz in Washington, D. C., (WWW.SPIEGEL.DE), Special: Transatlantic Relations, Think Tank’s Trans-Atlantic Advice, Europe Must Stop “Fetichizing” American Relationship, posted [11/02/2009]. Now there is an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, and the native American in me still believes that a picture captures part of your soul, much like the picture of Doran Gray, but be that as it may, here were from left to right as viewed [UK] Prime Minister Brown, The Media Messiah Imperial President the lead, French President Sarkozy, and last but not least Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, doing what we [Independent Tea-party, Tea-Baggers], call Step’in and a Fetch’en, which pretty much means dancing to the “Pipers Tune”. The caption under the photograph/picture, read When America says jump, Europe asks how high? But a new study says the European Union must stop taking such a submissive attitude toward it’s trans-Atlantic ally,[end quote].
[UP THEIRS]
Now, as an [Independent Tea-Party, Tea-bagger], exception is taken to the idea that “When America says jump”, and Gregor needs to get out of the American-Israeli Empire, and come out into Tea-bagger country, were not the one’s asking Europe to jump, an were having the same problems with the Empire as anyone else on our shared common globe, we no more want to be cookie cutter, cut outs, Clinton type clones step’in and a Fetch’en for the Empire than anyone else, think [Ruby Ridge-Waco & Oklahoma City], the Empire doesn’t speak for us [Independent Tea-Party, Tea-Baggers], they see the world as Black and White, and only their way or the highway, The Media Messiah Imperial President, Bill and Hill are the perfect example of what the Community of World Citizens are expected to act, look, and think like, and the (DC/544) will enact laws to ensure that happens. We Tea-baggers when told to jump, jump up on one foot and plant the other up their back-sides and they don’t even have to ask just how high up it went, it’s up theirs.
[DO YOU WANT TO PLAY THE SUBMISSIVE?
Now, Greg short for Gregor, also said that Europeans should stop taking a submissive attitude towards the [EMPIRE], Gee! Do you think? It’s the [21st] Century, it is the century of the Dreamers, Thinkers and Workers of [This Century], and the question that those Dreamers, Thinkers, and Workers of the [21st] Century, have to ask themselves are they going to be cookie cutter clones of the perfect Community of Citizens, as defined by the [DC/544], or is it time that the Era of the American-Israeli Empire [END], that the Wars of Resources and Markets End, that the thousand of troops of Empire Occupation on European soil End, and isn’t it time for the “PRIME DIRECTIVE” the policy of non-interference, observe but do not interact unless asked to do so. Isn’t it time for nations to respect the national boarders of the others, and not take it upon themselves to determine what is culturally correct, or religiously acceptable, does the community of world citizens want to be clones of Hillary Diane Rodham-Clinton, her way or the highway, or Bill Clinton, sticking his finger in your face and flat being a liar, liar, pants on fire, who doesn’t know what the meaning of Is, [IS]. Greg we Tea-baggers have run the [DC/544] out of town-hall meeting on a rail, so maybe you boys in Europe should put a little backbone [ram-rod up their back-sides] in your leadership vice letting them get back rubs and learn Step’in and Fetch’en from “em” short for them, do ya/you think, its time to take the knee pads off.
HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN
Pingback posted November 5, 2009 @ 7:20 pm
[...] reporters and opinion columnists all year. There’s all the Washington Times, which launched an opinion site last month, The [...]
Comment posted November 6, 2009 @ 3:08 am
Independent Tea-bagger? You may as well say carniverous vegitarian, it would make more sense.
Does your boyfriend know you're a tea bagger? Just crouch down and lick the neocon hand that fed you all that. Hate is love! War is peace! We pray your children are smarter than you.
I sincerely hope that dimwitted meandering screed didn't take you too long to write. This took me 30 seconds, 31 more than you deserved.
Comment posted November 6, 2009 @ 6:09 pm
REPLY TO JJFITZ FM TRIATHLON
Your an exmple of a True Democratic, unable and unwilling to comment upon any argument only able to vent your anger with vile remarks, your way or the highway, Republicans can't deal with you and Independents don't see the sense.
HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN
Comment posted November 7, 2009 @ 9:32 am
The Washington Times has been whoring for the far end of the political spectrum for more time than Fox has existed. G. Gordon Liddy frequently cited their 'reporting' more than a decade ago. This is just more of the same.
Reed & Don Irvine, Newt, Accuracy in Media, Boehner, Taitz, Teabaggers: the echo chamber resonates louder and louder. Truth, facts, and substance are replaced by desires, fiction, and ideology. The first casualty has already been documented earlier this decade – the ability of the Constitution to protect American citizens.
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