To your readers: We originally sent this rebuttal to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in response to at least three recent articles attacking our news outlet. They ignored our efforts so we are posting our response here, where it will get more traffic.
In recent days, since two Georgia election workers and Protect Democracy, a large far-left political organization filed a lawsuit against The Gateway Pundit, there have been several hit pieces written against our conservative news outlet.
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As the Founder and Publisher, I take all criticism seriously. For over a decade we have worked very hard to offer the best online views and analysis. That mission has seen our web traffic increase year over year, and now we are one of the TOP 250 websites in the country, with 2.5 million readers a day.
These people come to our site because they know they can get information they cannot get elsewhere, and we have a commitment to facts and free speech that you cannot get elsewhere. Whereas NPR and USA Today will always toe the center-left agenda, only at the Gateway Pundit can you find views and analysis without the overbearing left-wing agenda in every sentence.
The Reuters hit piece came out on December 3. Now, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes a news article and an opinion article barfing back the same arguments as Reuters.
READ JIM HOFT’S RESPONSE TO REUTERS HIT PIECE HERE
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It’s also no surprise that the timing of these pieces coincides with a lawsuit filed against the Pundit making these same arguments.
What they are doing is generally called ‘lawfare’ to try and silence the Pundit, but the combination of the media hits are designed to taint the jury pool and also influence judges who might hear our case. They are trying to ‘set the record’ that we are guilty before trial.
But really, guilty of what? In all their complaining and all their teeth-gnashing, what are they really upset about with the Pundit?
They’re upset that commenters on the Pundit aren’t nice to left-wing elected officials. They assume that all negative comments that come from these stories come from people who are reading the Pundit.
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Here’s what Reuters is complaining about:
Witzel-Behl is among 25 election officials and workers targeted by more than 100 threatening and hostile communications that have cited the Gateway Pundit since last year’s election, according to a Reuters review of the materials, which included emails, letters, and phone messages, as well as comments posted on the website’s stories.
So angry people cited the Pundit in their mean messages to these officials, so now we’re being sued.
Here’s another paragraph from Reuters:
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Two additional officials, a Fulton County election commissioner and another Maricopa county supervisor, blamed the Gateway Pundit for inciting serious threats of violence they received after the site implicated the officials in baseless claims of election-rigging. Those threats did not reference the website by name.
Notice that last sentence: ‘those threats did not reference the website [the Gateway Pundit] by name.
Meaning that they’re just assuming it has something to do with us.
We’re getting blamed for what our readers, and even those who aren’t reading us, think about the stories they read.
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Here’s the Post-Dispatch’s “News” story.
In it you’ll notice that they say that the Pundit ‘incited’ attacks by reporting false information about these individuals.
Here are all the unobjective, loaded ways, that they describe the Pundit: that we traffic in a “vote-rigging conspiracy theory” and are the “leading purveyors of false information in the United States” and that we are a “far-right website” and that we are accused of “spreading baseless conspiracy theories and disinformation for fame and fortune” and that “they repeatedly published demonstrably false claims.”
And that is just from the first three paragraphs. They are falling over themselves to try and bad-mouth and defame the Gateway Pundit.
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Nowhere do they mention that the two plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman were truthfully on video doing extremely suspicious things like running ballots through tabulator machines multiple times, exchanging items suspiciously that look like USB sticks, and pulling out ballots from hidden suitcases.
The reason they don’t give that kind of context is because any reasonable person who heard those facts would find them very suspicious. The video is very suspicious. They are not acting like impartial election workers. Georgia had numerous chain of custody problems as well.
The Post-Dispatch gives you none of that context.
It assumes its readers are so stupid that they will take the cues from all the mean words they associate with the Gateway Pundit.
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If you want to be told how to feel about a topic without context, read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
If you want the best views and analysis, join the millions of Americans reading the Gateway Pundit.
Look at their cowardly editorial on the topic, here.
Opening sentence: “Normally, the St. Louis-based website The Gateway Pundit can and should be laughed off as right-wing, fake-news nonsense.”
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Then later, still in the first paragraph, “the site’s false allegations of election fraud” … “have stoked harassment and death threats against two dozen election officials.” It refers to us as a “toxic platform” and complains that the public needs to be more ‘discerning’ and that the Pundit has a “damaging grip on political discourse.”
This is just the first paragraph.
They aren’t telling readers anything factual, or making any kind of coherent argument, they are just using word association to make us the boogeyman.
When they don’t have an argument, they call you nasty names.
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If publishing viewpoints can cause ‘incitement’ where the publisher can then be liable, then every controversial topic will be removed from public view. This kind of vengeance theater will shut down all public debate. If publishing pro-life articles might cause someone to shoot a doctor and publishing pro-abortion articles might cause someone to shoot up a pro-life vigil, the easiest answer will be to publish neither and just publish sports scores and the weather.
But this isn’t about justice or holding people accountable, this is just part of the lawfare seeking to shut down conservative voices.
After all, if media ‘incitement’ from bad reporting can create liability for what readers do with the information, then will the mainstream media get sued for the BLM riots of summer 2020 that caused $4 billion in damages? Should the widow of David Dorn be able to sue CNN?
If you’re old enough, you probably remember the mainstream media complaining about internet websites they disliked where people were sharing their own news. Before that they complained about the Drudge Report. Before that, they complained about Fox News. Before that, they complained about conservative books. Before that, they complained about talk radio. Before that, they complained about conservative mailers, bulletins, direct mail.
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The political left has sought to silence the right from ever being able to speak a word in opposition.
As they litigate, persecute, prosecute, burn, loot and destroy, they always portray themselves as the benign victims. They are the good guys in their twisted minds, because the right-wingers are always the ones who hold a monopoly on crimethink.
Yet the political right is nothing more than business owners who want low taxes, homeschoolers who want to be left alone, gun owners who want to be left alone, families who want to be left alone.
Even in conservative areas no one is suing to shut down National Public Radio or USA Today or Reuters or the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
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But the first comment on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s editorial slamming us says it best:
The Post-Dispatch and MSM created Gateway Pundit. Blatant distortion and outright inaccuracies destroyed the confidence the public had on those institutions. From the doctoring of the Zimmerman 911 tape, to the discredited Russia conspiracy, the Michael Brown controversy, the inaccurate reporting on the Rittenhouse trial, to calling the Jan. 6 riot an “insurrection,” you’ve forfeited any claim to credibility. People look to alternate sources because you are no longer trusted.
Source material can be found at this site.
