The Federalist

Conservatives talk about cancel culture too much

If you are on the right I suspect you have heard leftists saying something like this: ‘Thousands of people are dying from coronavirus, the Chinese and Indians are fighting, young black men are being killed on the streets and all conservatives can talk about is “cancel culture”. What is up with that?’Well, in the past few weeks there have been attempts, many successful, to force people out of their jobs for discussing social science studies and genetic research, for saying all lives matter, for questioning whether the killing of George Floyd was racially motivated, for publishing a US senator’s opinion piece, for making edgy jokes, for refusing to ‘walk around with a BLM sign’, for wearing blackface to a Halloween party two years ago et cetera.

canceled cancel culture

Another fine media mess

When I spoke with NBC News earlier this week to talk about the media industry’s role in combating misinformation, I worried that the story might gain undue traction if any footage happened to get posted from my Zoom interview. In it, I was sitting in front of a bookcase full of chainsaw operation manuals and guides to dealing with invasive plant species. (Hello from COVID exile in rural Maine, where every day is Groundhog Day. Literally. A family of groundhogs has taken up residence outside the living room window.)Instead, the story turned out to be the fruits of a partnership between NBC News and a nonprofit called the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

nbc news
Google logo

Who doesn’t fund the Federalist?

One of the internet's most elusive questions — who funds the Federalist? — has finally been answered. Well, sort of. NBC announced Tuesday that Google would be banning the Federalist from its ad platform, meaning the conservative website will no longer be able to earn money from running Google ads. The Federalist was targeted alongside ZeroHedge, a right-wing financial blog. Or so NBC claimed. 'We have strict publisher policies that govern the content ads can run on and explicitly prohibit derogatory content that promotes hatred, intolerance, violence or discrimination based on race from monetizing,' a Google spokesperson said of the decision. 'When a page or site violates our policies, we take action.