 | |
| Type | Online news site |
|---|---|
| Format | Website |
| Editor-in-chief | Eliana Johnson |
| Managing editor | Sonny Bunch, Victorino Matus, Stephanie Wang |
| Founded | 2012; 13 years ago (2012) |
| Political alignment | Conservative |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| Website | freebeacon |
The Washington Free Beacon is an Americanpolitical journalism website launched in 2012.[1][2] The website identifies asconservative.Eliana Johnson is the website's editor-in-chief.
TheFree Beacon has broken stories about states using racial preferences in rationingCOVID-19 drugs, exposedColumbia Law School's plans to evade the banning of consideration of race in admissions, and uncovered Yale administrators' bullying of a student, which led to personnel changes at the school.[3] TheFree Beacon also reported on plagiarism accusations against Harvard PresidentClaudine Gay, who resigned shortly thereafter.The Washington Post called Gay's resignation "a major win" for theFree Beacon, which it called "the rare conservative media outlet that does significant reporting of its own."[4] The website's reporting on a number of senior administrators atColumbia University exchanging text messages it considersantisemitic led three deans to resign.[5]
TheFree Beacon was founded byMichael Goldfarb, Aaron Harrison, andMatthew Continetti. It launched on February 7, 2012, as a project of the Center for American Freedom, a conservative advocacy group modeled on the liberalCenter for American Progress.[6] The website is financially backed byPaul Singer, an American billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican donor.[7]
The site is known for its conservative reporting, with the intention to publicize stories and influence the coverage of themainstream media, and is modeled afterliberal counterparts in the media such asThink Progress andTalking Points Memo.[6][8][9] The site has roots in theneoconservative wing of the Republican Party.[10]
In 2019,Politico journalistEliana Johnson assumed the editor-in-chief position from theWFB's founding editor Matthew Continetti. At the time, the outlet had 24 staffers.[11]
Jack Hunter, a staff member of SenatorRand Paul's office, resigned in 2013 after aFree Beacon report detailed his past as a pro-secessionist radioshock jock known as the "Southern Avenger".[8]
The publication also broke several stories aboutHillary Clinton's successful 1975 legal defense of an accused child rapist that attracted national media attention.[12]
From October 2015 to May 2016,The Free Beacon hiredFusion GPS to conduct opposition research on "multiple candidates" during the2016 presidential election, includingDonald Trump. TheFree Beacon stopped funding this research when Trump clinched the Republican nomination.[13] Fusion GPS later hired former British intelligence officerChristopher Steele and produced theSteele dossier that alleged links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.Paul Singer, a major donor to theFree Beacon, said he was unaware of this dossier untilBuzzFeed News published it in January 2017.[14] On October 27, 2017, theFree Beacon publicly disclosed that it had hired Fusion GPS, and said that it "had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele".[15]
TheFree Beacon came under criticism for its reporting on Fusion GPS. Three days before it was revealed that theFree Beacon had funded the work by Fusion GPS, theFree Beacon wrote that the firm's work "was funded by an unknown GOP client while the primary was still going on."[16] TheFree Beacon has published pieces portraying Fusion GPS's work as unreliable "without noting that it considered Fusion GPS reliable enough to pay for its services".[16] In an editor's note, Continetti wrote, "the reason for this omission is that the authors of these articles, and the particular editors who reviewed them, were unaware of this relationship", and that the outlet was reviewing its editorial process to avoid similar issues in the future.[17]
In 2022, aFree Beacon article by Patrick Hauf accused PresidentJoe Biden's administration of planning to use federal dollars to fund safe smoking kits that includedcrack pipes as part of aharm reduction initiative;[18] this prompted outrage among Republicans in Congress, some of whom proposed a bill to ban the federal government from funding drug paraphernalia.[19]The Washington Post later reported that, according to aUnited States Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson, "Hauf jumped to a conclusion that was not warranted" because, while the safe smoking kits were meant to reduce risk in smoking "any illicit substance", the agency funding the program "d[id] not specify the kits' elements, only the parameters"; thus, although such smoking kits often include crack pipes and (according to aDrug Policy Alliance spokesman interviewed for theWashington Post article) some of the groups planning to apply for the funding had assumed that its kits would also include them, it was not clear that the agency had intended to include them.[19]
Bill Gertz, a senior editor until October 2019, took $100,000 fromGuo Wengui, a conspiracy theorist, without disclosure,[20] wrote stories citing him, and introduced him toSteve Bannon.[21] Gertz was subsequently fired,[22] with a disclaimer appended to his affected stories.[20]
In 2023 and 2024,The New York Times credited theFree Beacon with breaking, together withChris Rufo,[23] and subsequently expanding on, the plagiarism accusations against Harvard PresidentClaudine Gay,[24] who resigned shortly thereafter.[25]The Washington Post called Gay's resignation "a major win" for theFree Beacon, which it called "the rare conservative media outlet that does significant reporting of its own".[4]
In May 2024, theFree Beacon reported that theDavid Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA had continued to evaluate applicants based on race rather than qualifications despite the illegality of race-based affirmative action in Californiasince 1996. According to the outlet's reporting, 50% of UCLA medical students now fail basic tests of medical competence. A former admissions staff member called UCLA a "failed medical school".[26][27]
On July 3, 2024, theFree Beacon reported that a number of senior administrators atColumbia University had exchanged text messages demeaning members of a panel on Jewish life on campus after the2024 Columbia University pro-Palestinian campus occupations.[28] In August 2024, three deans resigned in the wake of that reporting.[5]
Jim Rutenberg ofThe New York Times described the reporting style of theFree Beacon as "gleeful evisceration".[29]The Atlantic'sConor Friedersdorf called theFree Beacon's mission "decadent and unethical".[30]
Ben Howe wrote inThe Daily Beast thatThe Washington Free Beacon established "itself as a credible source of conservative journalism with deep investigative dives and exposes on money in politics", but afterTrump's election it was "producing less actual reporting" and moved "more towards the path of least resistance: spending their time criticizing the left and the media, along with healthy doses of opinion writing".[31]McKay Coppins in theColumbia Journalism Review wrote in September 2018 that while the website contains "a fair amount of trolling… it has also earned a reputation for real-deal journalism… If a partisan press really is the future, we could do worse than theFree Beacon".[32]
Jeet Heer wrote inThe New Republic: "Much of the conservative press is terrible but theFree Beacon is far superior to propagandist fare likeThe Daily Caller. Unlike other comparable conservative websites, theFree Beacon makes an effort to do original reporting. Its commitment to journalism should be welcomed by liberals".[33] In 2015,Mother Jones wrote that theFree Beacon was far better than contemporary conservative outlets such asThe Daily Caller but that "theBeacon hasn't always steered clear of stories that please the base but don't really stand up", and that it tends towards inflammatory pieces that "push conservatives' buttons".[34] That same year, theWashingtonian wrote that "The Beacon's emphasis on newsgathering sets it apart among right-facing publications".[35]
Ben Smith wrote inBuzzFeed News that theFree Beacon was "[a]lternately parodic and wire-service serious", and had "broken major political news, mostly negative" (although its focus was mainly directed against Democrats). Smith continued that theFree Beacon's hard news reporting differentiated it from other conservative outlets which were either opinion focused or did not produce journalism which met mainstream standards.[11]
Politico Magazine reported that it is "somewhat grudgingly respected in liberal circles."[3]
began almost immediately after the hearing with a post by Mr. Rufo, who had obtained an anonymous dossier of work published by Dr. Gay in which she had allegedly plagiarized other scholars, as well as a report in the Washington Free Beacon
Additional allegations continued to surface in conservative outlets like The Washington Free Beacon
Dr. Gay's resignation came after the latest plagiarism accusations against her were circulated in an unsigned complaint published on Monday in The Washington Free Beacon
