The Daily Caller

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The Daily Caller is a conservative news and opinion website co-founded by Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel (a former Cheney advisor) in 2010.^[1][2] Similar to the liberal Huffington Post, the website covers current events both political and offbeat, as well as human interest topics such as education, "guns and gear", and technology, with plenty of clickbait to go around. Select articles from the site are regularly reprinted on Yahoo! News, be forewarned.

"Journalism"[edit]

The Daily Caller takes a denialist stance about global warming.^[3][1]

On June 15, 2012, during a press conference by President Barack Obama announcing executive actions on immigration law regarding children brought illegally to the U.S., Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro heckled Obama with leading questions like, "Why do you favor foreigners over Americans?"^[4]

Shortly before the US Senate election day in New Jersey, the website published a story titled "Women: Sen. Bob Menendez paid us for sex in the Dominican Republic."^[5] Established news sources like ABC and even the tabloid New York Post avoided reporting on these accusations due to questionable credibility.^[6][7] The story blew up in the Caller's face when it turned out that one of the accusers was a paid liar,^[6] and the FBI found no evidence to back up the accuser's story either.^[8]

Bigotry[edit]

The site defended Vice magazine co-founder Gavin McInnes for transphobic remarks that claimed that transgender people are "mentally ill… nuts trapped in a crazy person's body" along with words like "fag" sprinkled in, because McInnes was "willing to expose the mechanics of our P.C. outrage culture."^[9] But it's totally not outrage for the Daily Caller to post ten articles a day to spark online outrage over something some libtard left winger said on MSNBC, is it not?^[10]

The site has stories that basically deliver a message, black people/gay people/insert-outgroup-here evil. On October 17, 2014, the Caller published a story with the racially charged headline "Black males are viciously beating people at random at the University of Illinois" that was later retitled "Gang Of Men Is Viciously Beating People At Random At The University Of Illinois"; the original title still shows up in the URL, showing that at some point the article had that title in the header.^[11] Hypocritically, the Caller criticized Salon five days later for posting an article^[12] about "white menaces" to society following riots at Keene State College in New Hampshire during the college's "PumpkinFest", satirically framing it and "white culture" in the same terms so frequently used to describe the behavior of black people.^[13] The site also posted a story "Same-sex rape in the military on the rise" with the undertone that replacing don't ask, don't tell with open service was harmful to the US military.^[14]

Don't expect any substantive, enlightening discussions in the comments section, with plenty of anti-racist is a code word for anti-white to go around, as well as ignorant broad brush remarks about liberals or anyone who isn't a True American™.^[15]

Check Your Fact[edit]

In 2019, Check Your Fact, a fact-checking service that The Daily Caller (as well as the Searle Freedom Trust^[16]) funds and shares some of its employees with, became one of Facebook's six official fact checkers for US audiences (which was pushed for by Joel Kaplan, a former George W. Bush aide who now works at Facebook). Climate scientists have been concerned about it because of The Daily Caller's anti-scientific stance on the issue of climate change (and the reception of a lot of Koch network funding).^{[note 1][18][1]} This isn't necessarily a good criticism unless it can actually be demonstrated that Check Your Fact has produced faulty fact-checks (you will know them by their fruits, as they say). As of 2023, the International Fact-Checking Network didn't believe there was a problem; Check Your Fact is an accepted partner of the network. The site had initially been expelled from the network for lack of transparency in its funding from The Daily Caller, but was later readmitted.^[18][19] As of 2019, they were said to be editorially independent from The Daily Caller. An editor for Check Your Fact stated: "We don't have an editorial stance on climate change, or any other topic for that matter."^[1] The site shares an editor with USA Today.^[20]

It can be said, though, that their content is (e.g.) "more likely to select a True statement by a Republican and a False statement by a Democrat" (per Media Bias/Fact Check^[17]) though that doesn't mean their fact checks are inaccurate.^{[note 2]} One ought to keep a look out for whether they ever do begin producing faulty fact-checks, but that's not exactly especial to them. Though, Vox (in 2019) cited that "even when Check Your Fact does fact-checks of claims like Trump's recent one about wind turbines causing cancer that ultimately arrive at the correct conclusion (Trump’s claim was false), the site elevates fringe voices [as a source for facts] in the process." This is at least somewhat of a legitimate criticism.^[18] A cursory search of their fact-checks related to climate change today (2023) uncovers some more articles refuting false statements by people opposed to taking action against climate change.^[21] In another Trump-related case, The Verge argued that Check Your Fact favored a conservative interpretation of an ambiguous statement so they could label a Politico headline as false through Facebook's fact-checking program.^[22][23]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]