Dan Bongino is a conservative success story, and that makes him a target. CNN contributor Evan Osnos notes in his piece in The New Yorker that “Bongino’s Facebook page alone “has attracted more engagement than those of the Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal combined.” Ashli Babbitt retweeted Bongino more than 50 times.
So who does Osnos talk to to learn about Bongino? A university professor who calls him “an important node in the amplification of propaganda,” and Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters, which has promoted advertiser boycotts of Bongino’s show.
It must be awesome living rent-free in the @NewYorker's brain, eh @dbongino? lol.https://t.co/fTpBJaZoiV
— Joseph Vazquez (@JV3MRC) December 28, 2021
Glenn Greenwald says CNN has so whittled down its credibility that they have to take on people with larger audiences than they have.
The @NewYorker profile of Dan Bongino by CNN's @eosnos is so predictable you could write it yourself without reading it. It *laments* that the new online/media ecosystem Bongino uses is built to prevent censors like Media Matters from banning ideas — as if that's a bad thing. pic.twitter.com/AaZvRwDBFQ
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 28, 2021
“There used to be lines,” Carusone wails.
Whatever you think of Bongino or anyone else whose views you hate, it's incomparably dangerous to allow groups created by supreme DC scumbag David Brock to police our discourse, and it's good and healthy that new independent platforms deny them that powerhttps://t.co/DR9zP87MXP
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 28, 2021
If conservatives are so censored on social media, they should make their own Twitter, right? So Bongino backed Parler and YouTube competitor Rumble. And now they’re complaining about it.
The reason we created @FreedomofPress was Joe Lieberman and other neocons had pressured and threatened Paypal, Visa, MasterCard, Amazon and banks to cut off WikiLeaks' fundraising. That's the new tactic to crush dissent. Anything that subverts it is good.https://t.co/VyDo2hrOn7
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 28, 2021
One last point about the formulaic Bongino profile: it used to be that a @TheNewYorker hit piece by a CNN writer would be harmful. Now: it doesn't matter. They've so whittled their credibility that the targets of their smears have larger audiences than they, making them impotent. pic.twitter.com/WMIWBUtInY
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 28, 2021
Doesn’t CNN have some human resource problems to work out?
To malign competitors who have more success, corporate outlets accuse them of catering to an insular like-minded audience. Pure projection! That's what The Atlantic/NewYorker axis does: speaks only to mainstream liberals & David Frum types. That's why they lost their influence.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 28, 2021
Over the last decade, corporate outlets decided their only profit model was to feed a specific ideological camp a non-stop orgy of validation and flattery. That's why so many fail: Vice/Gizmodo/HuffPost/Vox = NYT/NewYorker/Atlantic. Same ideology, no dissent: purely insular.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 28, 2021
As their audience, prestige and influence rapidly erodes, the go-to line of attack for old corporate outlets is to claim that their more successful, more independent competitors only speak to a homogenous audience. That's true of *them*: we speak to a diverse range of readers.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 28, 2021
But Bongino, if left unchecked, is going to be the platform from which right-wingers launch the next insurrection!
They’re afraid. Good.
— Steven Groves (@stevegroves) December 28, 2021
In the 1990s we would say that "on the Internet, censorship is perceived as damage, and avoided." It's time we lived that aphorism.
— Malcolm Root (@malcolm_root) December 28, 2021
Imagine openly and proudly championing a practice of denying people the freedom to lawfully rent a bus.
— ElleZee (@ElleZee6) December 28, 2021
Carusone frets that PayPal would let the “January 6 people” recruit money to rent a bus.
"Build your own internet"
— Brian Adams (@fwchiro) December 28, 2021
💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽 The legacy censorship powers are scared shitless of not being able to squash what they disagree with. It’s a beautiful thing.
— Steven Jay (@StevenJay1988) December 28, 2021
Not being a censor = “being friendly to right wing views”?
— Michael Drayton (@mdrayton) December 28, 2021
They’re losing and they know it.
— Cville-ian (@Lalvahoo) December 28, 2021
Dan is promoting the most dangerous thing in world history. Freedom of speech.
— gregcoyne (@gregcoyne) December 28, 2021
All Media Matters is trying to do is redraw those lines that the media didn’t cross.
Related:
CNN’s Brian Stelter stunned by ‘real ad for a real show’ hosted by Dan Bongino on Fox Nation https://t.co/Pnf71rg1Zs
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 21, 2021
