Alexander: The Left's 'Moderation' of Conservative Media

Sometimes I am able to plan a topic more than 48 hours ahead of my deadline. This started as one of those weeks. But as with the best-laid plans, sometimes it’s necessary to alter them. (I’ll say a bit more on that original topic at the end of this column.)

The Patriot Post has become the target of a thinly veiled effort to undermine the reach of our conservative voice. That effort was launched by one of the biggest entertainment/news tabloids on the Web, BuzzFeed, with a review claiming that we’re “the biggest mystery in conservative media” and raising questions about the team “behind one of the oldest conservative” online news organizations.

BuzzFeed’s media editor, its resident expert on “fake news” (I know, the irony is rich), has used that platform for his inquiry. When a Leftmedia outlet with a budget hundreds of times the size of our small grassroots organization targets us — a “David versus Goliath” contest, if you will — it creates a quandary.

We have a longstanding Patriot Post policy: “Don’t swap spit with a jackass.” But when the accuser has a huge platform, as one of our editors noted, “to leave misinformation uncontested is tantamount to suggesting that it’s true.” And while it’s likely that none of you, our readers, are even aware of the BuzzFeed accusations, rebut we must.

Sometimes criticism is intended to be constructive.

Last week, for example, I wrote about the rise of a new genre of digital-media arbiters of truth, in which I mentioned a new media accountability effort, NewsGuard, and explained how it worked. I further noted that whenever humans render opinions about the world around them, they inevitably bring a bias to that perspective.

However, undergoing NewsGuard’s process of evaluation was helpful to our team. It employs a battalion of professional journalists, which we have never claimed to be, and their questions and suggestions helped us improve what we do.

On the other hand, sometimes criticism is intended to be destructive. With BuzzFeed, and the leftist academic social-media “expert” who pointed them at us with a clear agenda, their intent was something other than constructive.

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