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'''Andrew J. Breitbart''' ({{IPA-en|ˈbraɪtbɑrt|pron}}; born February 1, 1969) is an [[United States|American]] webmaster,<ref name="c-span"/> commentator for the ''[[Washington Times]]'', author,<ref>[[Farai Chideya|Chideya, Farai]]. [http://www.npr.org/blogs/newsandviews/2007/09/semper_fi_media.html "Semper Fi Media"], ''[[National Public radio]]'', September 14, 2007. Accessed January 18, 2009. "The other person on the panel was Andrew Breitbart, who runs Breitbart.com, a news aggregator. That basically means that he culls what he considers the best of the news and puts it on one site. As it turns out, it's a profitable business. He's also an author, a blogger,"</ref> an occasional guest commentator on various news programs who has served as an editor for the [[Drudge Report]] website. He was a researcher for [[Arianna Huffington]], and helped launch her website, [[The Huffington Post]].<ref name="huff">{{cite web|url=http://news.cnet.com/Breitbart.com-has-Drudge-to-thank-for-its-success---page-2/2100-1025_3-5976096-2.html |title=Breitbart.com has Drudge to thank for its success |accessdate=2009-07-29 |publisher=Cnet news |year=2005 |month=November}}</ref>
'''Andrew J. Breitbart''' ({{IPA-en|ˈbraɪtbɑrt|pron}}; born February 1, 1969) is an [[United States|American]] publisher,<ref name="c-span"/> commentator for the ''[[Washington Times]]'', author,<ref>[[Farai Chideya|Chideya, Farai]]. [http://www.npr.org/blogs/newsandviews/2007/09/semper_fi_media.html "Semper Fi Media"], ''[[National Public radio]]'', September 14, 2007. Accessed January 18, 2009. "The other person on the panel was Andrew Breitbart, who runs Breitbart.com, a news aggregator. That basically means that he culls what he considers the best of the news and puts it on one site. As it turns out, it's a profitable business. He's also an author, a blogger,"</ref> an occasional guest commentator on various news programs who has served as an editor for the [[Drudge Report]] website. He was a researcher for [[Arianna Huffington]], and helped launch her website, [[The Huffington Post]].<ref name="huff">{{cite web|url=http://news.cnet.com/Breitbart.com-has-Drudge-to-thank-for-its-success---page-2/2100-1025_3-5976096-2.html |title=Breitbart.com has Drudge to thank for its success |accessdate=2009-07-29 |publisher=Cnet news |year=2005 |month=November}}</ref>


He currently runs his own news aggregation site, Breitbart.com, and five other websites: Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace.
He currently runs his own news aggregation site, Breitbart.com, and five other websites: Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace.

Revision as of 06:31, 25 April 2011

Andrew Breitbart
Born
Andrew J. Breitbart

(1969-02-01) February 1, 1969 (age 55)
Los Angeles, California, United States
Alma materTulane University
Occupation(s)Writer, Columnist
SpouseSusie Bean (m. 1997)[1]
Children4
Websitewww.breitbart.com

Andrew J. Breitbart (pronounced /ˈbraɪtbɑrt/; born February 1, 1969) is an American publisher,[2] commentator for the Washington Times, author,[3] an occasional guest commentator on various news programs who has served as an editor for the Drudge Report website. He was a researcher for Arianna Huffington, and helped launch her website, The Huffington Post.[4]

He currently runs his own news aggregation site, Breitbart.com, and five other websites: Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace.

Origins and personal life

He is the adopted son of Gerald and Arlene Breitbart, a restaurant owner and banker respectively, and grew up as a secular liberal Jew in upscale Brentwood, Los Angeles.[5][6] He explains that his birth certificate indicates his biological father was a folk singer, and that he is ethnically Irish by birth.[5] His adopted sister is Hispanic.[5] He changed his political views after experiencing an "epiphany" during the Clarence Thomas hearings, and now describes himself as "a Reagan conservative" with libertarian sympathies.[2]

During high school he worked as a pizza deliveryman and car washer.[7] He graduated from Tulane University in 1991 with "no sense of [his] future whatsoever".[8] His early jobs included a stint at cable channel E! Entertainment Television, working for the company's online magazine, and some time in film production.[6]

He is married to Susannah (Susie) Bean, the daughter of actor Orson Bean, and has four children.[4][9]

Public life

Authorship, research and reporting

In 1995 Breitbart saw the Drudge Report and was so impressed that he emailed Matt Drudge. Breitbart said, "I thought what he was doing was by far the coolest thing on the Internet. And I still do."[4] Breitbart described himself as "Matt Drudge’s bitch"[10] and selected and posted links to other news wire sources. Later Matt Drudge introduced him to Arianna Huffington (when she was still a Republican)[6] and Breitbart subsequently assisted her (after she became a progressive) in creating her website.

Breitbart guest-hosted the Savage Nation talk radio program on several occasions.[citation needed] He also regularly fills in for Dennis Miller as host of Miller's nationally-syndicated radio show.[citation needed] Breitbart's work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, National Review Online and the Weekly Standard Online, among others. He writes a weekly column for The Washington Times, which also appears at Real Clear Politics. Breitbart also co-wrote the book Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon with Mark Ebner, a book that is highly critical of U.S. celebrity culture.[11] On January 19, 2011, the conservative gay rights group GOProud announced Breitbart had joined its Advisory Council[12]

Breitbart recently authored Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World, which discusses his own political evolution and the part he took in the rise of New Media, most notably at the Drudge Report and at The Huffington Post.

Breitbart has said that his next launch will be called "Big Education," and will take on the academic establishment.

Commentaries

Breitbart has appeared as a commentator on Real Time with Bill Maher and Dennis Miller. In 2004 he was a guest commentator on Fox News Channel's morning show and frequently appears as a guest panelist on Fox News's late night program, Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld. Breitbart also appeared as a commentator in the 2004 documentary Michael Moore Hates America.[13]

On October 22, 2009, Breitbart appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal. He gave his opinions on the mainstream media, Hollywood, the Obama Administration and his personal political views, having heated debates with several callers.[2]

In the hours immediately following Senator Ted Kennedy's death, Breitbart called Kennedy a “villain,” a “duplicitous bastard,” a “prick”[14] and "a special pile of human excrement."[15][16]

In February 2010 Breitbart received the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. During his acceptance speech, he responded directly to accusations by New York Times reporter Kate Zernike that Jason Mattera, a young conservative activist, had been using "racial tones" in his allusions to President Obama, and had spoken in a "Chris Rock voice." From the podium, Breitbart called Zernike "a despicable human being" for having made such allegations about Mattera's New York accent.[17]

Activism

Main article: Tea party movement

Breitbart often appears as a speaker at Tea Party movement events across the U.S. For example, Breitbart was a keynote speaker at the first National Tea Party Convention at Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville on February 6, 2010.[18] Breitbart later involved himself in a controversy over homophobic and alleged racial slurs being used at a March 20, 2010 rally at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. by asserting that slurs were never used, and that "It was a set-up" by Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party. Breitbart offered to donate $100,000 to the United Negro College Fund "for any audio/video footage of the N-word being hurled", claiming that they made it up. Breitbart insisted Congressman Lewis and the several other witnesses were forced to lie, concluding that "Nancy Pelosi did a great disservice to a great civil rights icon by thrusting him out there to perform this mischievous task. His reputation is now on the line as a result of her desperation to take down the Tea Party movement."[19][20]

Websites

I'm committed to the destruction of the old media guard. And it's a very good business model.

— Andrew Breitbart, quoted by the Associated Press, August 3, 2010[21]

Breitbart has launched a number of websites, including Breitbart.com, BigHollywood.com, BigGovernment.com, BigJournalism.com, and BigPeace.com.[citation needed]

Breitbart launched his first website as a news site; it is sometimes linked to by the Drudge Report and other websites. It features wire stories from the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Fox News, PR Newswire, U.S. Newswire, as well as direct links to a number of major international newspapers. Its Blog & "Network" links tend to run to the right within the U.S. political spectrum (e.g., National Review and Townhall.com). The site also features a search engine powered by Lingospot and a finance channel powered by FinancialContent. In 2007, Breitbart launched a video blog, Breitbart.tv.[22]

In 2008 Breitbart launched the website "Big Hollywood," a "group blog" driven by some who work within Los Angeles, featuring contributions from a variety of writers, including entertainment-industry professionals who politically lean right.[23] The site, an outgrowth of the column "Big Hollywood" that Breitbart wrote for the Washington Times, addresses issues facing conservatives who work in Hollywood.[24] In 2009, the site used audio from a secretly recorded conference call to accuse the National Endowment of the Arts of encouraging artists to create work in support of Barack Obama's domestic policy agenda.[25][26]

Breitbart launched BigGovernment.com on September 10, 2009.[27] He hired Mike Flynn, a former government affairs specialist at Reason Foundation,[28] as Editor-in-Chief of Big Government.[29] The site premiered with hidden camera video footage taken by Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now offices in various cities, attracting nationwide attention resulting in the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy.

In January, 2010, Breitbart launched Big Journalism. He told Mediaite:[30] "Our goal at Big Journalism is to hold the mainstream media’s feet to the fire. There are a lot of stories that they simply don’t cover, either because it doesn’t fit their world view, or because they’re literally innocent of any knowledge that the story even exists, or because they are a dying organization, short-staffed, and thus can’t cover stuff like they did before." Big Journalism was edited by Michael A. Walsh, a former journalism professor and Time magazine music critic.[30] It is now currently edited by Dana Loesch. The site has a fictional contributor named "Retracto, the Correction Alpaca" who posts items requesting corrections from the traditional media.[31]

BigPeace.com debuted July 4, 2010. The site covers topics such as international issues and foreign policy, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorism, Islamic extremism, espionage, border security, and energy issues.[citation needed]

Controversies

Main article: Resignation of Shirley Sherrod

On July 19, 2010, Breitbart posted two short videos showing excerpts of a speech by Shirley Sherrod at an NAACP fundraising dinner in March 2010. The videos ensuing controversy resulted in Sherrod being fired from the United States Department of Agriculture on July 19. After it became clear that the videos Breitbart posted omitted the point Sherrod was making, Breitbart posted the complete 40-minute video of the speech revealing the true meaning of her statements in context.[32][33][34] The NAACP stated that the video excerpts aired by Breitbart were deliberately deceptive and said that he had "snookered" the group.[33][34] Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, later apologized to Sherrod and offered her a new job.[35] In 2011, Sherrod brought suit against Breitbart for defamation.[36]

Main article: ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy

Breitbart was also involved in the 2009 ACORN video controversy. Hannah Giles[37][38] posed as a prostitute seeking assistance while James O'Keefe portrayed her boyfriend, and clandestinely videotaped meetings with ACORN staff.[39] Subsequent criminal investigations by the Brooklyn District Attorney's office and the California Attorney General found the videos were heavily edited in an attempt to make ACORN's responses "appear more sinister",[40][41][42] and contributed to the group's demise.[43][44] Breitbart then provided a forum for O'Keefe on his BigGovernment.com website[45] and defended his actions on Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel program.[46]

Breitbart has also been embroiled in a controversy within the conservative movement related to the participation of gay group GOProud in the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual conference held in Washington, D.C. by the American Conservative Union. In 2011 he was the primary host of a party that served to "welcome" the "homocons" to the convention (though it was the second year they had been participants). This flew in the face of a boycott staged by a few social conservative groups that were offended by the inclusion of GOProud within the conservative fold. Writer, producer, and publisher Roger L. Simon referred to the party as a "game-changer" for the Republican party, and asserted that it represented a turning point in the appeal that the conservative movement might hold for young people. Breitbart is now on the Advisory Board of GOProud.[47]

References

  1. ^ a b Beam, Christopher (July 22, 2010). "Breitbart's Back: The man behind the Shirley Sherrod shakeup". Salon.
  2. ^ a b c Andrew Breitbart, Breitbart.com Publisher C-SPAN, October 22, 2009. Breitbart referred to the "Democrat-media complex" several times (from 14:45); demanded the host disconnect one caller, calling him a "creep" because he claimed that he witnessed Clarence Thomas renting pornography (from 16:00); defended the ACORN videos he published (from 18:15); stated conspiracy theories can be used to convince the poor that "the white man is out to get you" (23:15-24:30); said he is a limited government, low-tax conservative, sympathetic toward libertarian views, with a "libertine soft-spot" on issues of consensual behavior among adults (from 24.45).
  3. ^ Chideya, Farai. "Semper Fi Media", National Public radio, September 14, 2007. Accessed January 18, 2009. "The other person on the panel was Andrew Breitbart, who runs Breitbart.com, a news aggregator. That basically means that he culls what he considers the best of the news and puts it on one site. As it turns out, it's a profitable business. He's also an author, a blogger,"
  4. ^ a b c "Breitbart.com has Drudge to thank for its success". Cnet news. 2005. Retrieved 2009-07-29. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  5. ^ a b c "Big Breitbart: Andrew Breitbart is messing with you. - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine". www.slate.com. Retrieved 2010-03-17.
  6. ^ a b c Taranto, James (October 16, 2009). "The Weekend Interview With Andrew Breitbart: Taking On the 'Democrat-Media Complex' – WSJ.com". online.wsj.com. Retrieved 2009-10-18.
  7. ^ Rice, Ned (2009-06-01). "Can Andrew Breitbart Save Hollywood?". Townhall. Retrieved 2009-07-27.
  8. ^ McCain, Robert Stacy (2007-05-29). "'News addict' gets his fix". The Washington Times. Retrieved 2009-07-27.
  9. ^ Orson Bean (2005). "Sgt. Curtis Massey Was 41". Cnet news. Retrieved 2009-07-29. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  10. ^ "Lists: What's Your Source for That? Where Andrew Breitbart gets his information". ReasonOnline.com. Retrieved 2008-10-01.
  11. ^ Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon—The Case Against Celebrity, John Wiley & Sons
  12. ^ http://www.goproud.org/conservative-media-mogul-andrew-breitbart-to-join-goproud%E2%80%99s-advisory-council/
  13. ^ "National Review Online <http://www.nationalreview.com>". www.nationalreview.com. Retrieved 2009-11-02. [dead link]
  14. ^ "Not all Kennedy critics hold fire". Retrieved August 26, 2009.
  15. ^ "Compromise: what Pennsylvania lawmakers could learn from Ted Kennedy" (editorial), The Patriot-News (Pennsylvania), 28 August 2009. Retrieved 24 September 2009.
  16. ^ "Opinion: Ted Kennedy, the liberal adversary to the conservative movement". www.digitaljournal.com. Retrieved 2009-09-24.
  17. ^ Benson, Guy. The New York Times Owes Jason Mattera an Apology, Big Journalism, February 19, 2010.
  18. ^ Breitbart Keynote Part 1 of 4, Nashville, February 2010 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
  19. ^ Breitbart, Andrew (April 2, 2010). "Barack Obama's Helter-Skelter, Insane Clown Posse, Alinsky Plans to 'Deconstruct' America". Big Journalism.
  20. ^ Alexander, Andrew (April 11, 2010). "Allegations of spitting and slurs at Capitol protest merit more reporting". Washington Post. Retrieved April 14, 2010.
  21. ^ Blood, Michael R. (August 3, 2010). "Breitbart: Enemy of the left with a laptop". Associated Press.
  22. ^ Owen, Rob. The next wave: Ex-WTAE anchor Scott Baker changes channel to run Web news site, Post-Gazette
  23. ^ "Breitbart's Conservative Alternative to Left-y Celebrity Blogs". Retrieved 2008-11-04.[dead link]
  24. ^ "Hollywood Infidel". The New York Observer. March 16, 2007. Retrieved 2008-10-01.
  25. ^ "'The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasuion". Big Hollywood. August 25, 2009.
  26. ^ "'Yosi Sergant Resigns". ABC News. September 24, 2009.
  27. ^ "New Political Blog 'Big Government' Launches Tomorrow". http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/. Retrieved 2009-06-14. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
  28. ^ "Introducing Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, Edited by Mike Flynn", Nick Gillespie, reason.com, September 10, 2009
  29. ^ Author page for Mike Flynn Editor-in-Chief of Big Government
  30. ^ a b Exclusive Interview: Andrew Breitbart Announces Launch of New “Big” Sites Colby Hall, Mediaite, December 10th, 2009
  31. ^ Author page for "Retracto, the Correction Alpaca" at Big Journalism
  32. ^ Breitbart, Andrew (July 19, 2010). "Video Proof: The NAACP Awards Racism–2010". Big Government.
  33. ^ a b "Anatomy of a Smear Campaign". CNN. 2010-07-22.
  34. ^ a b "NAACP 'snookered' over video of former USDA employee". CNN. 2010-07-21.
  35. ^ Jalonick, Mary Clare; Evans, Ben (July 22, 2010). "Ag secretary offers Sherrod 'unique' position". Associated Press.
  36. ^ Zeleny, Jeff (February 13, 2011). "At Gathering, Ron Paul Is No. 1 for 2012". The New York Times. pp. A21. Retrieved 2011-02-14. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  37. ^ http://biggovernment.com/contributors/
  38. ^ http://townhall.com/columnists/HannahGiles
  39. ^ Taylor, Andrew (September 14, 2009). "Senate votes to deny funds to ACORN". The Seattle Times. Associated Press. Retrieved September 20, 2009.
  40. ^ Rovzar, Chris (2010-03-02). "Damaging Brooklyn ACORN Sting Video Ruled 'Heavily Edited,' No Charges to Be Filed". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
  41. ^ "REPORT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL ON THE ACTIVITIES OF ACORN" (PDF). April 1, 2010.
  42. ^ An Independent Governance Assessment of ACORN, December 7, 2009
  43. ^ "House Votes to Strip Funding for ACORN". Fox News. 2009-09-17. Retrieved 2009-09-17.
  44. ^ Lorber, Janie (December 11, 2009). "House Ban on Acorn Grants Is Ruled Unconstitutional". The New York Times. p. A12. Retrieved February 1, 2010.
  45. ^ http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/11/on-why-i-dont-return-phone-calls-from-an-intrepid-cnn-producer/#
  46. ^ "Where Is Mainstream Media on Undercover ACORN Videos?". Fox News. September 15, 2009. {{cite news}}: Text "2009-09-15" ignored (help)
  47. ^ Christopher R. Barron "Conservative Media Mogul Andrew Breitbart to Join GOProud’s Advisory Council", [1], goproud.org, January 19, 2011

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