The Daily Caller is a really, really, *really* putrid "news" source.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Just a sample of their work over the years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Caller

Controversies[edit]

Climate change denial[edit]

The Daily Caller has published a number of articles that dispute the scientific consensus on climate change.[19] In 2017, The Daily Caller published a story claiming that a "peer-reviewed study" by "two scientists and a veteran statistician" found that global warming had been fabricated by climate scientists.[20][21] The alleged "study" was a PDF file on a WordPress blog, and was not peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.[20] That same year, The Daily Caller uncritically published a bogus Daily Mail story which claimed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) manipulated data to make climate change appear worse; at the same time, legitimate news outlets debunked the Daily Mail story.[22][23][24] That same year, The Daily Caller published a story claiming that a study found no evidence of accelerating temperatures over a 23-year period, which climate scientists described as a misleading story.[19] In 2016, The Daily Caller published a story claiming that climate scientist Michael Mann (director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University) had asserted that data was unnecessary to measure climate change; Mann described the story as "egregiously false".[25] In 2015, The Daily Caller wrote that NOAA was "fiddle[d]" with data when the agency published a report concluding that there was no global warming hiatus.[26][27]

False prostitution allegations[edit]

In March 2013 The Daily Caller posted interviews with two women claiming that New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez had paid them for sex while he was a guest of a campaign donor.[28] The allegation came five days before the 2012 New Jersey senate election. News organizations such as ABC News, which had also interviewed the women, the New York Times, and the New York Post declined to publish the allegations, viewing them as unsubstantiated and lacking credibility.[29][30][31] Subsequently, one of the women who accused Menendez stated that she had been paid to falsely implicate the senator and had never met him.[29][32] Menendez's office described the allegations as "manufactured" by a right-wing blog as a politically motivated smear.[33]

A few weeks later, police in the Dominican Republic announced that three women had claimed they were paid $300–425 each to lie about having had sex with Menendez.[34] Dominican law enforcement also alleged that the women had been paid to lie about Menendez by an individual claiming to work for The Daily Caller. The Daily Caller denied this allegation, stating: "At no point did any money change hands between The Daily Caller and any sources or individuals connected with this investigation".[35] Describing what it saw as the unraveling of The Daily Caller's "scoop", the Poynter Institute wrote: The Daily Caller stands by its reports, though apparently doesn't feel the need to prove its allegations right".[36]

Fox News controversy[edit]

In March 2015 The Daily Caller columnist Mickey Kaus quit after editor Tucker Carlson refused to run a column critical of Fox News coverage of the immigration policy debate.[37] Carlson, who also works for Fox, reportedly did not want The Daily Caller publishing criticism of a firm that employed him.[38] Journalist Neil Munro quit two weeks later.[39]

2016 presidential election[edit]

According to a study by Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, The Daily Caller was among the most popular sites on the right during the 2016 presidential election. The study also found that The Daily Caller provided "amplification and legitimation" for "the most extreme conspiracy sites", such as Truthfeed, Infowars, Gateway Pundit and Conservative Treehouse during the 2016 presidential election.[40][41][42] The Daily Caller also "employed anti-immigrant narratives that echoed sentiments from the alt-right and white nationalists but without the explicitly racist and pro-segregation language."[41] The Daily Caller also played a significant role in creating and disseminating stories that had little purchase outside the right-wing media ecosystem but that stoked the belief among core Trump followers that what Clinton did was not merely questionable but criminal and treasonous. In a campaign that expressed deep anti-Muslim sentiment, a repeated theme was that Hillary Clinton was seriously in hock to Muslim nations.[41] In one of its most frequently shared stories, The Daily Caller falsely asserted that Morocco’s King Mohammed VI flew Bill Clinton on a private jet, and that this had been omitted from the Clinton Foundation's tax disclosures.[41] The Daily Caller also made the "utterly unsubstantiated and unsourced claim" that Hillary Clinton got Environmental Protection Agency "head Lisa Jackson to try to shut down Mosaic Fertilizer, described as America’s largest phosphate mining company, in exchange for a $15 million donation to the Clinton Foundation from King Mohammed VI of Morocco, ostensibly to benefit Morocco’s state-owned phosphate company."[41]

Encouragement of violence against protesters[edit]

In January 2017, The Daily Caller posted a video which encouraged violence against protesters.[43][44][45][46] The video in question showed a car plowing through protesters, with the headline "Here's A Reel Of Cars Plowing Through Protesters Trying To Block The Road" and set to a cover of Ludacris' "Move Bitch."[43] The video drew attention in August 2017 when a white supremacist plowed his car through a group of counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.[43] After the video attracted attention, The Daily Caller deleted it from its website.[43][46]

The Southern Poverty Law Center subsequently criticized The Daily Caller, saying that it had a "white nationalist problem".[47] SPLC also said that two other contributors to The Daily Caller had ties to white nationalist groups.[47] It later retracted its claim that Richard Pollock, a devout Jew, was a white nationalist, saying "Pollock was initially included in this story" but "there is no evidence to suggest Mr. Pollock is otherwise a white nationalist."[47]

Ties to alleged white nationalist members[edit]

According to Salon, Scott Greer, deputy editor of The Daily Caller, had ties to members of the white nationalist movement, including friendships with Devin Saucier, assistant to Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, and with anti-immigrant activist Marcus Epstein, who pled guilty to assaulting an African American woman two years prior.[48] Greer has later deleted parts of his Facebook page, but his Twitter account shows he follows white nationalists, and he is sometimes photographed with white nationalists like Tim Dionisopoulos and Richard Spencer, and appears wearing clothes belonging to the group Youth for Western Civilization.[48]

The Daily Caller has also posted articles by Jason Kessler,[49] a white supremacist who organized a rally of hundreds of white nationalists in Charlottesville.[50][51] Before Kessler posted his article, it was known that he had spoken at white supremacist gatherings.[52] After Kessler received attention for his organizing of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, the Daily Caller removed his articles from its website,[53] but The Daily Caller executive editor defended Kessler's articles.[54]

The website has also published pieces by Peter Brimelow, founder of the white supremacist website VDARE.[48]

Heckling of Obama[edit]

In 2012, Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro heckled Barack Obama during one of the President's press conferences. Munro interrupted Obama while he was giving remarks. For a reporter to interrupt remarks by the president was considered startling and a breach of etiquette. Editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson defended Munro's actions, saying "As a general matter, reporters are there to ask [questions]" and that he was "proud" of Munro. Munro later said that he intended to ask questions after the president had made his remarks but that he misjudged when the president was closing his remarks.[55][56][57][58]

Stefan Halper[edit]

The Daily Caller was the first news outlet to report on Stefan Halper, a confidential FBI source, and his interactions with Trump campaign advisors Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. Other news outlets confirmed Halper's identity but did not report his identity because US intelligence officials warned that it would endanger him and his contacts.[59][60][61]

Allegation of non-profit abuse[edit]

According to Callum Borchers of the Washington Post, the Daily Caller has "a peculiar business structure that enables it to increase revenue while reducing its tax obligation."[62] The organization, a for-profit company, does this by relying on its charity arm, the Daily Caller News Foundation, to create the majority of its news content.[63]

According to Lisa Graves, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration, the situation is “a huge rip-off for taxpayers if the Daily Caller News Foundation is receiving revenue that it doesn't pay taxes on, to produce stories that are used by the for-profit enterprise, which then makes money on the stories through ads.”[64]

Imran Awan[edit]

The Daily Caller kept conspiracy theories surrounding Imran Awan alive with aggressive coverage.[65][66] Imran Awan was an IT worker for Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Daily Caller sought to tie Awan to a wide range of alleged criminal activity, including unauthorized access to government servers.[67] The reporter behind the aggressive coverage of Awan told Fox News that the affair was "straight out of James Bond."[67] An 18-month investigation by federal prosecutors found no evidence of wrong-doing in Awan's work in the House and no support for the conspiracy theories about Awan. In the announcement of the conclusion of the investigation, investigators rebuked a litany of right-wing conspiracy theories about Awan.[65][66]

Chinese email hacking[edit]

In August 2018, The Daily Caller ran a story alleging that a Chinese company hacked then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server and successfully obtained nearly all of her emails. The Daily Caller cited “two sources briefed on the matter.” After publishing the story, President Trump tweeted the allegations made in Daily Caller's reporting. According to The Washington Post, the claims are without evidence.[68]

And yet their "reporting" is considered more trustworthy to Donald Trump than that of our own intelligence agencies.

[dmr]

1. Thank you for posting this.

I came to DU specifically because of a text a close family member just sent me that included a link to the Daily Caller, and of course it's about Hillary Clinton, her emails and China. He even copy/pasted the article knowing full well I wouldn't click on the link.

I am so fucking sick of this bullshit

Anyway, I am appreciative of finding this thread.

[beachbum bob]

2. Ranks with breitbart and Alex jones..

And foxnews is closing in

[Initech]

3. As I said yesterday it's the Weekly World News for white supremacists.

Which is maybe a slight step below the National Enquirer but they're all pretty putrid.

[Mc Mike]

4. Tucker Carlson is a nazi balloon head.