The Daily Caller

The Daily Caller has published articles that dispute the scientific consensus on climate change. According to Science magazine, The Daily Caller's "climate reporting focuses on doubt and highlights data that suggests climate concerns from the world's leading science agencies and organizations are incorrect".[41] In 2011, the Daily Caller published a false story claiming that the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was going to spend $21 billion per year to hire 230,000 staff to regulate greenhouse gas emissions; at the time, the EPA had 17,000 staff and a total budget of $8.7 billion.[42][43][44][45] The story went viral in right-wing media,[42] and Republican politicians repeated the story.[44] Other news outlets noted that the story was false, but The Daily Caller stood by the story.[42] Adweek reported that the decision of David Martosko, executive editor at The Daily Caller, to stand by the story caused dismay among some the website's staff, who believed the decision undermined the credibility of the outlet.[46]

In 2017, The Daily Caller published a story falsely claiming that a "peer-reviewed study" by "two scientists and a veteran statistician" found that recent years have not been the warmest ever.[47] The alleged "study" was a PDF file on a WordPress blog, and was neither peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal.[47] Also in 2017, 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,[48][49] as did Media Matters.[50] Also in 2017, 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.[51] 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 are unnecessary to measure climate change; Mann described the story as "egregiously false".[52] In 2015, The Daily Caller wrote that NOAA "fiddle[d]" with data when the agency published a report concluding that there was no global warming hiatus.[53][54]

In 2018, President Trump dismissed a National Climate Assessment report by the EPA about the impact of climate change in the United States, citing a Daily Caller story that the Obama Administration had pushed the authors of the report to focus on the worst-case scenario. FactCheck.org found no evidence for the claims made in The Daily Caller's story, and that the EPA report focused both on lower and higher scenarios and largely looked at climate change impacts that had already occurred. FactCheck.org noted that the report underwent multiple reviews, both internally and externally, and that the report was available for public review for a period of three months. The Daily Caller cited as evidence for its claims a memo that allegedly showed that the Obama administration pushed the authors of the report to include worst-case scenarios; FactCheck.org noted the memo "does not show that the Obama administration pushed for certain scenarios".[55]

In 2011, The Daily Caller was the first news outlet to disseminate a Project Veritas video by conservative provocateur James O'Keefe which purportedly showed an NPR fundraiser deriding Republicans. The video was later proven to have been misleadingly edited.[10] In February 2012, The Daily Caller was criticized for an "investigative series" of articles co-authored by Carlson, purporting to be an insiders' exposé of Media Matters for America (MMfA), a liberal watchdog group that monitors and scrutinizes conservative media outlets, and its founder David Brock.[63] Citing "current and former" MMfA employees, "friends" of Brock's and a "prominent liberal", the article characterized MMfA as having "an atmosphere of tension and paranoia" and portrayed Brock as "erratic, unstable and disturbing", who "struggles with mental illness", in fear of "right-wing assassins", a regular cocaine user and would "close [local bars] and party till six in the morning". Reuters media critic and libertarian Jack Shafer criticized The Daily Caller piece as "anonymously sourced crap", adding "Daily Caller is attacking Media Matters with bad journalism and lame propaganda". Shafer said that he had "never thought much of Media Matters' style of watchdogging or Brock's journalism".[64]

In August 2018, The Daily Caller ran a story alleging that a Chinese-owned company had hacked then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server and successfully obtained nearly all of her emails, citing only, "two sources briefed on the matter". President Trump retweeted the allegations made in The Daily Caller's unsubstantiated reporting. The FBI stated that there was no evidence to support the story.[65][66] In January 2019, The Daily Caller published a story with the misleading headline, "Here's The Photo Some Described as a Nude Selfie of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez". The photo was not of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, and Ocasio-Cortez condemned The Daily Caller's action as "completely disgusting behavior".[15] The Daily Caller apologized for the headline and changed it.[19] The Daily Caller said that the content of the story was not unlike stories published by Vice and The Huffington Post.[67] Vice had in fact published an article debunking the claim that the photo was of Ocasio-Cortez.[68]

In November 2012, 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.[69] The allegation came five days before the 2012 United States Senate election in New Jersey. 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.[70][71][11] Subsequently, one of the women who accused Menendez stated that she had been paid to falsely implicate the senator and had never met him.[70][72] Menendez's office described the allegations as "manufactured" by a right-wing blog as a politically motivated smear.[12]

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,[73] and alleged that the women had been paid to lie about Menendez by an individual claiming to work for The Daily Caller. The website 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".[74] Describing what it saw as the unraveling of The Daily Caller' "scoop", the Poynter Institute wrote: "The Daily Caller stands by its reports, though apparently doesn't feel the need to prove its allegations right".[75]

In February 2017 Politico and BuzzFeed reported Capitol Police accused five IT staffers for Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives of trying to steal House computer equipment and violating House security policies.[76][77][78] Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was one of several House members who did not terminate the suspected staffers after the criminal complaints.[79] In July 2017, one of the accused staffers, Imran Awan, was arrested for making a false statement on a bank loan application.[80][81] After his arrest, Wasserman Schultz's office fired Awan.[82]

The Daily Caller pushed conspiracy theories about Awan,[83][84] seeking to tie Awan to many alleged criminal activities, including unauthorized access to government servers.[85] The reporter behind the coverage of Awan told Fox News that the affair was "straight out of James Bond".[85] An 18-month investigation by federal prosecutors found no evidence of wrongdoing 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.[83][84]

Daily Caller journalist Stephanie Hamill interviewing Republican Congressman Andy Biggs in 2020.

According to a study by Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, The Daily Caller was among the most popular right-wing news sites during the 2016 United States presidential election. The study found that The Daily Caller provided "amplification and legitimation" for "the most extreme conspiracy sites", such as Truthfeed, InfoWars, The Gateway Pundit and Conservative Treehouse.[99][100][101] 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".[100]

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.[100] The Daily Caller also made the "utterly unsubstantiated and unsourced claim" that Hillary Clinton instructed 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".[100]

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".[102] 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.[103]

Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy argues, "It's 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". Benjamin M. Leff of American University writes, "But the fact that it also provides its content to other publishers for free is evidence that it is not operated for the private benefit of the for-profit, even if the for-profit is the dominant user of its content".[104]

Scott Greer was deputy editor and contributor at The Daily Caller. After his departure in June 2018, it was revealed that he published articles espousing white nationalist, racist anti-black and antisemitic views under a pseudonym in white supremacist publications.[17] In September 2018, The Atlantic reported that Greer between 2014[18] and 2018, had written pieces under a pseudonym "Michael McGregor" in the white supremacist publication Radix Journal from 2014 to 2015. In articles for Radix Journal, Greer expressed white nationalist views, as well as racist anti-black and antisemitic views. In his emails and messages, he exchanged anti-Christian and antisemitic comments, with colleagues including Richard Spencer.[17] After being confronted with his past white supremacist writings, Greer resigned from any affiliation with The Daily Caller.[17] In 2017 it was revealed that Greer had ties to members of the white nationalist movement, including friendships with Devin Saucier, assistant to Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, and anti-immigrant activist Marcus Epstein of VDARE, who had pled guilty to assaulting an African American woman two years prior to the beginning of his relationship with Greer.[105] Greer had later deleted parts of his Facebook page, but is seen photographed with white nationalists such as Spencer, Tim Dionisopoulos, the Wolves of Vinland, and also appears wearing clothes belonging to the group Youth for Western Civilization.[106][105] The Daily Caller subsequently stated about why he had not been fired in 2017: "We had two choices: Fire a young man because of some photos taken of him at metal shows in college, or take his word. We chose to trust him. Now, if what you allege is accurate, we know that trust was a mistake, we know he lied to us. We won't publish him, anyone in these circles, or anyone who thinks like them. People who associate with these losers have no business writing for our company".[17]

Prior to June 2017,[107][18] The Daily Caller had published freelance articles by Jason Kessler,[105] a white supremacist who organized the Unite the Right rally in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia.[108][109][36] That rally took place while Kessler was suspended from The Daily Caller, after ProPublica had found that an article he had written for The Daily Caller about a previous torchlight rally in Charlottesville in May 2017 had not disclosed that he made a speech at the event praising fascist and racist groups.[110][36] After the suspension, Daily Caller executive editor Paul Conner defended Kessler's article as accurate.[110][111] The Daily Caller deleted all of Kessler's articles from its website in August 2017 after the Unite the Right rally, which he had organized with Spencer and others, turned into deadly violence.[36]

Until 2017,[18] the website had also published pieces by Peter Brimelow, founder of the white supremacist website VDARE,[105][112] and by David Hilton, an anti-Semite who has pushed conspiracy theories that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks. In his articles for The Daily Caller, Hilton promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about George Soros, as well as conspiracy theories about "Cultural Marxism".[18]

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported in 2017 that The Daily Caller had a "white nationalist problem", citing contributions by Kessler, Brimelow, Greer, and Ilana Mercer, whose writing on supposed racially motivated crime in South Africa was also published on the white nationalist website American Renaissance the same day it appeared in The Daily Caller.[106] The SPLC retracted a claim about a Daily Caller reporter, Richard Pollock, stating that except for speaking at a 2017 event of the H.L. Mencken Club, considered a white nationalist group, "there is no evidence to suggest Mr. Pollock is otherwise a white nationalist";[106] in 2018, according to the SPLC, Pollock cancelled his scheduled attendance at the same group's event.[113]