I suspect that most people who read this site don’t read the Gateway Pundit blog. I don’t either, but I know of it because that blog was founded a year or two after Pharyngula, and quickly skyrocketed to amazing amounts of traffic — it made me wonder what the secret was. It turns out that the secret was to lie constantly and make crap up, a strategy I wasn’t willing to adopt.
It was also run by Jim Hoft, The Dumbest Man on the Internet. I also wasn’t willing to lobotomize myself to compete.
Don’t waste your time reading it, though — Wikipedia has the short and extremely accurate summary.
The Gateway Pundit (TGP) is an American far-right fake news website. The website is known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.
It’s also going away, I assume. Gateway Pundit is bankrupt fiscally in addition to morally.
The founder of the Gateway Pundit, the infamous conspiracy theory site, announced on Wednesday that the company had declared bankruptcy.
Jim Hoft published a message on the website that read, “TGP Communications, the parent company of The Gateway Pundit, recently made the decision to seek protection under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code in the Southern District of Florida as a result of the progressive liberal lawfare attacks against our media outlet.”
They told one lie too many. Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss won a lawsuit against them for their false report that they’d rigged the presidential election. One more propaganda outlet down!
Basically the bankruptcy is a ploy…a lie…to avoid the lawsuits. Rudy G. also filed for bankruptcy following similar judgements against him. Per this Guardian article, there’s another lawsuit from someone at Dominion Voting Systems against TGP. I gather that TGP Communications is basically a shell company for the website.
“as a result of the progressive liberal lawfare attacks against our media outlet.”
In other words, the truth killed them.
Was part of the lie how TGP’s traffic “skyrocketed”? If you’re into lying it’s probably a no-brainer to fabricate traffic.
I have to laugh that Trump, who has spent years yapping about “fake news,” is now the defendant in a trial in which his own generating of fake news is a central issue. And it also doesn’t look like he has a friend in the entire courtroom; if I were on trial, I’d like to believe that at least some friends and family would show up to offer moral support. I guess if you treat people badly all your life it eventually catches up to you. At this point, he’s just a pathetic old man. And as such is simply the personification of the right wing mendacity machine.
@ ^ stuffin :
Meme seen on fb sometime before 17th August 2023 :
.* Because their grandma errors not mine – for once! ;-)
It is sobering to note Guiliani got popped $148 million for the same old lies about Freeman and Moss. Crime does not pay!
Italics & quote marks added by me for clarity.
@ 6. cheerfulcharlie : But the hours are good?
/ Wait no, they ain’t,
I mean not that I’d relly know and depends upon crime but anyhow..
Oh and of course, whilst hours may be good time served may be costly..
W apologies to Mad magazine if memory serves?
This is going to have Interesting Consequences — capitalization with malice aforethought — and some of them are apparent only through legal neepery. A few initial neeps:
• TGP isn’t “native” to the Southern District of Florida. It began as a “domestic” St. Louis concern and then mushroomed (related to Amanita). Given some of the recent trends in mass-tort/bankruptcy litigation — search for “Texas two-step” if you’d like your brain to explode, or just smile at the problems InfoWars has been having — there’s a decent chance that this petition will either be dismissed as without jurisdiction or transferred to somewhere that does. Filing in S.D. Fla. is a rather blatant jurisdiction-shopping effort to keep things in the supposedly friendly confines of the Eleventh Circuit, rather than elsewhere.
• Even if the filing is in a proper place, the kinds of debts resulting from litigation losses that find intentional conduct can (not necessarily are) excludable from the bankruptcy proceeding’s process. This can be through filing a motion to convert the reorganization proceedings (Chapter 11) to liquidation proceedings (Chapter 7); through a motion to object discharge of particular claims under § 523; through withdrawal of the reference (neepery^3) and hearing in the District Court; and a variety of other means.
• Then there’s the “pierce the corporate veil” issue, in which the principal(s) and “shareholder(s)” of the business entity find out that incorporation is not a magic wand that always absolves them of individual responsibility. It often is, especially as to purely passive investors (of whom there are remarkably few in TGP — either as to number or to passivity, even under the tests for “control person” in Delaware’s corporation law or anyone else’s); but the relatively recent examples of Enron and Adelphi demonstrate that it’s imperfect notwithstanding later publicity and spin-control efforts.
• Even inside of a continuing Chapter 11 proceeding, a Trustee can still be appointed if there is no proper debtor-in-possession. Since one of the factors that goes into determining whether the proposed debtor-in-possession (the management of TGP) is proper is whether the cause of the debt leading to insolvency was adjudicated intentional conduct. “Insolvency” has a technical definition in bankruptcy law that means that payments made during the 365 days preceeding the bankruptcy filing — and under some circumstances longer than that — can be clawed back by the Trustee under many circumstances. In this instance, “payments made to insiders” will be scrutinized…
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled schadenfreude.
@ awomanofnoimportance : “I have to laugh that Trump, who has spent years yapping about “fake news,” is now the defendant in a trial in which his own generating of fake news is a central issue.”
Not so much his own generating – tho’ done plenty of that on record – as much as Trump suppressing true & embarrassing news. In this specific court case anyhowz.
Yeah, Trumps lack of family and other support is very nicely karmically telling. Not that I believe in karma.
Oh if only. Also ex-USA Prez, current Repug POTUS nominee, iconic reichwing persnality ckult leader and, yes, pathetic, cruel, depraved, hate-filled, bigotry spewingand inciting, obscenely rich old man which he’s been since.. almost birth really.
@SteveR on 5
Isn’t that a lot of words to write “Reality has a well-known left wing bias?”
I was a communication minor way back in the day of Bush the Lesser. One of my papers was about the actual bias of “mainstream media”. Turns out: journalists have a slight left wing lean, editors have a slight right-wing lean, and owners have a strong right-wing lean. The news comes out centrist, leaning ever so slightly right.
Unless something has changed in the last 20 years, and I’m absolutely willing to guess it’s gotten worse, the “mainstream media” has never been left-wing.
@5 StevoR
Biblical/theological apologists have the same relationship to the sciences.
I hate it when bad things happen to bad people. No wait, I actually like it when that happens!
@11. antigone10 : Yes – but its rtaher intresting to see a right winger actually admit it so candidly.
Depends on who is meant by the media but in Australia, the mainstream media is dominaetd by Murdoch who is very heavlly right wing.. We also have Kerry Stokes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerry_Stokes#Controversy ) who is extremely right wing and who personally supported the war criminal Ben Roberts Smith (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-01/ben-roberts-smith-war-crimes-established-in-federal-court/102422952 ) and the channel 7 media coverage skews rightwing as fuck.Channel 9 is (or was?) controlled by Peter Costello (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Costello ) who has links to the ultra-conservative LNP party, etc.. Then there’s the power of radio shock jocks like Alan Jones who incuited the conulla ruiot and so on.
Basically there’s a very heavy right wing dominance of commercial media, the ABC and to a lesser extent SBS have been undermined by decades of LNP misrule and white anting and, yeah. If only media coverage here was even “centrist” rather than very biased against the left wing of politics.
There are a few left wing media sources – or oens that get accused of being left wing anyhow but they’re really upagainst it.
Yeah, prettty much never left wing for most media and it’s very much declined and gotten worse since Murdoch’s rise.
@ ^ That’s incited the Cronulla riot of course. See :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-02/tribunal-rules-alan-jones-incited-hatred/4292052
If they’re so worried about ‘progressive liberal lawfare attacks’, they should be agitating for robust anti-SLAPP statutes. What’s that? Georgia and Florida are anti-SLAPP states already? Hmm, it appears they are upset that they may be vulnerable to well-grounded legal actions against openly unconscionable behaviour!
I presume that’s based on US definitions of left and right, which are waaaay off to the right compared to most of the civilised world?
I would prefer that news outlets have a pro-honesty bias. It’s a shame that right-wing media has shed any pretense of being honest. It was clear to me as a kid in the 80’s, and it has only gotten more obvious. For Christ sake, they are still talking about Biden’s crimes as their impeachment charade falls apart while ignoring that fact that TFG has dozens of indictments going right now.
Because writing lies provides comfort to the audience, the (probably only) things preventing lies are shame, audience putting truth before comfort, and consequences.
Far right media obviously doesn’t have shame (their owners probably don’t have it to begin with, the corporate veil definitely doesn’t help). Their audience now don’t put truth anywhere at all (you know, even when they can die from a pandemic). Legal consequences are probably the only things that can put them in check now.
This is also why lying about climate change is so prevalent: there are almost no consequences. Even right now it’s hard to deny it’s existence, those who have been lying having seen any material consequences so they just change their versions of the lie.
This is also why these kind of media thrive in America and why “free speech absolutist” are morally bankrupt.
@ ^ AstrySol : “This is also why lying about climate change is so prevalent: there are almost no consequences.”
Um, actually there are huge consequences Ones we hear about on the news, too often also one’s we don’t hera about onthe news too. One’s that directly impact everyone’s lives today and oes that our great great great times many mor egreat’s grandchilchildren will be facing indefinitley far into the future,
Do you mean obvious immediate consequences to the speaker that amke tehm accountable for their lies? Coz sadly, inthat case, yeah
^ Hit post not preview sigh..
Yes, StevoR, that’s clearly what was meant:
“Legal consequences are probably the only things that can put them in check now.
This is also why lying about climate change is so prevalent”
In terms of legal consequence, but of course for that mob also political consequence.