News Outlet's Lazy Reporting Misrepresents The Western Journal, Botches Facts in Herman Cain Story
Business Insider mischaracterized The Western Journal in a story regarding Herman Cain’s decision to withdraw his name from consideration for the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, describing The Western Journal as a “far-right blog site.”
Other establishment outlets also appeared to seek to discredit The Western Journal in their descriptions.
President Donald Trump announced on Monday that Cain had contacted him and requested he not be nominated for the Federal Reserve.
In an opinion piece for his homepage later in the day, the former presidential candidate explained the reasons for his decision not to go forward with the nomination process.
Several news outlets published stories based on Cain’s Op-Ed — like The Hill, The Daily Beast and Newsmax — and they simply noted it was located at The Western Journal.
Some — such as Reuters, Politico, Bloomberg and the Los Angeles Times — took what they may have considered a small jab at The Western Journal by describing it as a “conservative website,” rather than simply using the news site’s name or referring to it as a publisher.
CNN described Cain’s opinion piece as a “blog post,” but did characterize The Western Journal as a “conservative news site.”
None of these outlets reached out to The Western Journal regarding the nature of the relationship it has with Cain, who hosts a daily online video program in addition to publishing opinion pieces on his homepage, which is a section of The Western Journal.
Cain addressed his decision to withdraw from consideration for the Federal Reserve on Tuesday’s program.
In his story about Cain’s decision, Business Insider’s David Choi called The Western Journal a “far-right blog site,” which elicited a multi-tweet response from Deputy Editor-in-Chief George Upper.
“@businessinsider clearly doesn’t know who we are or what we do, nor did they take the 9 seconds it would require to understand that this was not a ‘column’ on our site, but a column on Herman Cain’s homepage,” Upper wrote in his first tweet, linking to Choi’s story.
Upper further highlighted that Choi did not get the news site’s name right, omitting “The” from the title and referring to it as “Western Journal.”
2/3 They didn’t even get our name right. Nor did they reach to us to clarify any of these questions. Perhaps they were not even aware of their own ignorance. But that would seem like Fact-checking 101.
— The Upper Cut (@georgeupper) April 23, 2019
The editor further added that if Business Insider wants to describe The Western Journal as a “far right blog,” it clearly does not “have the knowledge needed to be reporting on the right at all.”
“I have to say I’m disappointed. I respect @businessinsider. Or I used to, anyway. Maybe they’ll do some homework and issue a correction,” Upper tweeted.
BizPacReview journalist Samantha Chang agreed, tweeting: “Left-wing shills Business Insider has no idea how centrist and moderate the Western Journal really is. In fact, they get criticized for being too centrist.”
Left-wing shills Business Insider has no idea how centrist and moderate the Western Journal really is. In fact, they get criticized for being too centrist.#FakeNews @BusinessInsider
— Samantha Chang (@samantha_chang) April 23, 2019
In response to Chang’s tweet, Upper pointed out, like many news outlets, multiple stories at The Western Journal each day are syndicated directly from the Associated Press, which is hardly known for producing “far right” pieces.
Chang also posted a chart showing The Western Journal has nearly the same Alexa visitor traffic ranking as Business Insider (144 versus 122 in the U.S.), and its long- term trajectory has been up, while BI’s has been down.
Nice downward trajectory on left-wing shill Business Insider’s pageviews. ? pic.twitter.com/lGkgOiG35x
— Samantha Chang (@samantha_chang) April 23, 2019
The Western Journal receives over 1.3 million page views per day and consistently ranks among the most engaged news sites on Facebook (usually above Business Insider) and in the top five conservative news sites in the country. The Western Journal also has 40 million likes among the multiple Facebook pages it operates, including Conservative Tribune by WJ, Liftable by WJ, and The Wildcard by WJ.
In one final shot at BI, Upper tweeted that Choi’s story would not have been published on The Western Journal because it does not “meet our editorial standards for fact checking.”
“This is the quality of establishment media coverage Big Tech thinks you should be limited to. Never forget that,” Upper wrote.
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