Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center really hates it when successful non-right-wing media operations demonstrate their success by being sold to other people. When Politico was sold to German publisher Axel Springer last fall, the MRC desperately tried to portray Politico as "left-wing" and its new owner as similarly oriented -- even though the company is on record as publishing conservative newspapers in Germany and and starting a Fox News-esque cable TV operation. When the online news operation Axios (coincidentally, founded by the same people who founded Politico) was sold to Cox Media Group, an Aug. 9 post by Catherine Salgado carried the screaming headline "BIG TECH COLLUSION?" How? Because Facebook is a sponsor of Axios' email newsletters:
Meta (Facebook) helped liberal outlet Axios’ growth allowing it to secure a $525 million sale price, part of a wider problem of tech companies funding D.C. media outlets, according to a new report.
Facebook helped recent media startup Axios sell itself to Cox Enterprises for $525 million only five years after Axios’ founding, according to Vox’s Peter Kafka. Tech companies are “pouring” money into Washington, D.C. media organizations, Kafka reported.
Axios is “a five-year-old media startup, backed by venture capital, that succeeded journalistically and financially,” Vox explained. The culmination of that financial success was the Cox purchase. Vox said that tech companies, including Meta and Google’s parent Alphabet, have been funding “digital publishers” focused on D.C. recently in an effort to repair their reputations. Axios isn’t alone. Liberal outlets like Politico and Punchbowl News are also among the media organizations that received tech company funding, Kafka wrote.
How typical that Salgado thinks any non-right-wing outlet cannot possibly make it on their own without help from "big tech" -- ironic, since major right-wing publications like the Washington Times and the New York Post are money-losers that in business only through the grace of rich, ideologically motivated owners (and her own paycheck depends on the good graces of right-wing moneybags like Rebekah Mercer).
Salgado then tried to tar Axios with the "leftist" tag, using two incredibly lame examples:
Axios is a leftist news outlet, that has demonstrated bias multiple times. Axios claimed the New York Post’s report on the now New York Times-authenticated Hunter Biden scandals “rings all the foreign-disinformation alarms in the book.” Axios also urged families in 2021 to have Thanksgiving “bouncers” to deny entry to any holiday guests who would not show a negative COVID-19 test.
Salgado didn't mention the pertinent fact that the Post offered no independent authentication of Hunter's laptop at the time of publication before the 2020 election, and the story's origin among right-wing fever swamps like the Post and Trump operatives like Rudy Giuliani provided no reason to take it at face value. She also didn't explain how taking care to avoid contact with possibly infected people in the middle of a pandemic is inherently "leftist."
Salgado went on to accuse Axios of the grave offense of [checks notes] selling ads:
While Big Tech companies like Facebook parent Meta make billions of dollars every year, publishers like Axios can thrive on the portion of tech companies’ profits spent on ads. Axios can allegedly charge as much as $300,000 for a week-long ad campaign, Kafka wrote.
Kafka also noted that various companies’ “corporate responsibility ads” in D.C. publications may account for $350 million spent yearly, with as much as one-third of that coming from tech companies.
Um, isn't that called capitalism? We thought the MRC liked capitalism.
