Somewhere along the line, conservatism abandoned faith in good journalism and became a cult of personality — or personalities. We made celebrities out of people like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, whose thinking is often paranoid and whose work is sloppy. The result is the current implosion in conservative media, triggered by the reckless antisemitism of Carlson, Owens, and Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi troll who was disastrously platformed by Carlson.
It didn’t have to be this way. When the rise of the internet gave conservatives a chance to level the playing field starting in the 1990s, it was an opportunity for excellence. We could produce better and more accurate journalism than the Washington Post and the New York Times. I had walked away from the Washington Post because the editors were changing my editorials to reflect liberal dogma.
For a few years, things were good. Conservatives unmasked Dan Rather for pushing phony documents, revealed the political activism of too many “reporters,” and reported on stories such as the rise of Trump that the legacy media ignored. We saw increased visibility for good, solid reporters such as Byron York, Mollie Hemingway, and John Solomon. I got a job at the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group. My editor always adhered to very strict models of accuracy.
Yet, the new technology also allowed for glib, motor-mouthed personalities who don’t do their homework and eat up all the attention by creating drama with their poor research. The Right is now paying the price for them.
Owens was recently humiliated by a young CNN reporter who pointed out that Owens is basing a conspiracy theory about the death of Charlie Kirk on a lot of erroneous “facts.” Another conservative bigmouth, Brett Cooper, criticized Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for calling Nick Fuentes a Nazi when Cruz objected to liberals calling all conservatives Nazis. Cooper was humiliated, or rather should have been, when Cruz noted that Fuentes had openly praised Adolf Hitler.
In short, Owens, Cooper, and Carlson are not checking their facts. Because they are telegenic personalities who punch back hard against the Left, they have been allowed to coast. The problem is not that Carlson interviewed Fuentes but that he did not perform as a journalist. He didn’t question Fuentes on the ghastly things that Fuentes has said over the years. Carlson was doing what the liberal media did for decades, giving his guy a pass.
Earlier this year, I confronted a New York Times reporter who had written articles about me that were untrue. In 2018, the reporter David Enrich was covering the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. I was a high school friend of Kavanaugh and got drawn into the controversy. Enrich replied to a question I asked him about his abysmal coverage this way: “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my role in the Kavanaugh coverage, and I would be happy to talk to you about it at some point. For now, I will just say that I have learned some lessons and would probably do certain things differently next time.” Then he added, “I can’t imagine what it was like for you to go thru that.”
This was obviously a remarkable admission from Enrich, and one that was used by conservatives to once again declare the corruption of the fourth estate. Yet, the coverage of my case on the Right has not been much better. In October 2024, Ben Shapiro posted a video about Kamala Harris’s Senate career. Shapiro’s lecture includes several errors, including calling Christine Blasey Ford “Christina” and getting her account wrong.
THE RIGHT’S CIVIL WAR OVER JEWS
It’s painful to say because I loathe the legacy media so much, but journalistic malpractice is killing conservative journalism. Despite my being near the center of the Kavanaugh blast, several conservative outlets did not review my book about the experience or show any interest in an interview. One of the few conservative outlets that did review it managed to, as one of my high school friends put it, “get you and us exactly, 100% wrong.” How can we scold the liberal media when our side is doing such a poor job?
In the last 30 years, it has been rewarding watching the rise of conservative media and how it challenges the narratives of fake news. Tragically, we’ve replaced them with people who, to quote an old Van Morrison song, have minds on vacation and mouths working overtime.