Exclusive — Peter Schweizer: Andrew Breitbart ‘Had a Profound Impact on Me,’ Taught Me to Interpret Media ‘in a Completely Different Way’

Peter Schweizer, author and president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), credited Andrew Breitbart with deepening his news media literacy on Thursday’s edition of the Breitbart News Daily podcast with host Alex Marlow.

“I just remember having conversations with [Andrew Breitbart] about how to actually read a news story,” Schweizer recalled of the founder of Breitbart News. “Now, I’m a guy that has read hundreds of thousands of news stories over the last 40 years, but — actually describing how the reporter is going to frame it a certain way, looking for the buried lede, looking for the meta information that really matters in this story — he got me to think about reading news stories and watching these stories in a completely, totally different way.”

Breitbart shared his news media acumen through conversation, Schweizer explained.

“In Andrew’s way, he didn’t sit down and lecture you about it,” he said. “[We had a] casual conversation about something else, and he would offer these insights. He had a profound impact on me, the way that I consume information, and that has helped me in my writing, the work I do with Breitbart [News], the work I do with books.”

Schweizer, an investigator of governmental corruption, is the author of Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win. He hosts The Drill Down alongside GAI colleague Eric Eggers, a weekly podcast describing itself as committed to exposing “crony capitalism, misuse of taxpayer monies, and other government corruption or malfeasance.”