Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, joined Dennis Prager on Wednesday’s edition of the latter’s eponymous radio program to discuss left-wing and partisan Democrat boycott and censorship campaigns directed against this news media outlet and endorsed by the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) top brass, including Police Chief Michel Moore.
Last Friday, Daily Beast editor in chief Noah Shachtman tweeted a de facto call for an advertiser boycott of Breitbart News:
The Los Angles Police Department described Breitbart News as opposed to its “core values” in a response to Shachtman:
Prager introduced Marlow as a “fighter,” praising Breitbart News as “a very important website” conducting “responsible, serious reporting.”
Marlow said, “My readership is being targeted, and it is a readership of over 20 million monthly readers, and that doesn’t include [our] over 30 hours of live broadcast on SiriusXM, as well, and we have so many supporters who are so diverse, and it is one of the great places where you can share ideas and debate, and it’s such a diverse type of people that make Breitbart possible, and now our audience is under attack by none other than the Los Angeles Police Department.
“I believe it starts with Breitbart, but we’re just the tip of the spear,” added Marlow. “I think next it will be the Salem audience, and it will be your audience, it will be Town Hall’s audience, and soon, [all] right-of-center viewpoints [are] going to be considered sinful or racist. Period.”
Marlow explained, “So Breitbart has been subject to an advertising boycott that is part of the cancellation culture that we’re going through now, which is where people spend a lot of time online, obsessively, trying to figure out who is providing a small amount of cash for Breitbart, buying banner ads, and trying to target them and get them to stop advertising with us, to try to cut off our business.”
LISTEN:
Marlow described organizers of boycott and censorship campaigns against Breitbart News and the broader conservative landscape.
“It is a small group of very well-funded people [who are] largely anonymous,” Marlow stated. “We don’t know who funds them, and they’ve given [themselves] this ethos so that it appears [to be] this vast group, but it’s really not. It’s a handful of AstroTurf far-left activists.
“Something changed a little bit last week, where a Daily Beast editor — the editor of the Daily Beast — a guy named Noah Shachtman, suggested to the Los Angeles Police Department that they should not be running recruitment ads on Breitbart. Instead of the LAPD doing nothing or suggesting Breitbart’s got over 20 million readers and is an overwhelmingly pro-law enforcement website, the Los Angeles Police Department sent out the following tweet, this is one of several, ‘The LAPD celebrates diversity and embraces it within our ranks, and within the city we serve. We are aware that a recruitment advertisement has been circulated on a website that creates a negative juxtaposition to our core values,’ and it goes on from there, but it suggested that Breitbart does not represent the LA police department’s core values, and [now] they’re investigating how to remove advertising from Breitbart.”
Marlow noted, “So this isn’t just a private business run by individuals, this is a government entity — a law enforcement entity — that is not just trying to ban and boycott a website, but trying to do so [to a news media outlet] that is an overwhelmingly pro-law enforcement and pro-police website.”
Prager replied, “I have no words. A police department would boycott a website of vast supporters of the police. This is just another example of what’s going on, and what they accuse you of has no truth… The left has even poisoned police departments.”
“They started to try to cut off our financial resources by having blacklists and trying to get our advertisers to leave us,” Marlow said of the so-called “grassroots” business shamers who have targeted Breitbart. “But this is an activist group who was doing this and leading the charge on it, a handful of people funded by the institutional left.”
Marlow went on, “[The LAPD] won’t tell us what these core values are… We’ve been trying to beg them to get an example, and then they say that we’re alt-right, and then we point out to them that our ownership is Jewish, the company is overwhelmingly pro-Israel… our chief copy editor is a black woman, our entertainment editor is a black man, Jerome Hudson, who had a great interview with you last week… our world editor is a Hispanic woman, you’ve had Joel Pollak on your show, an orthodox Jew.”
“We know that a lot of the rank and file of the LAPD — that are that thin blue line that keeps us safe — they’re not into this,” Marlow remarked. “This is the leadership, and it’s a leadership that I don’t think takes the real problems facing their city seriously… So now they won’t recruit conservatives. So what happens next? Where does the slippery slope go? If conservatives are unwelcome at the LAPD, they should just flat-out say it to us.”
Asked by Prager what LAPD officers and employees should do, Marlow determined, “I would say that they should probably speak up. I don’t think we can be silent any longer. This is the thing, a lot of conservatives are very passive.”
Prager regularly describes courage as one of the rarest — and most valuable — character traits.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.
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