So catty. Earlier this week, TheBlaze‘s Dana Loesch expressed dismay on Twitter over the fact that some right-wing reporters were instructed not to write about RedState‘s Ben Howe‘s new short documentary film, Bankrupt: How Cronyism and Corruption Brought Down Detroit. The outlet she was alluding to was Breitbart News, her former employer. RedState, meanwhile, promoted the film.
Loesch has her own checkered relationship with the news outlet, but The Mirror has learned that Breitbart News reporters were given a directive to not write about Howe’s new film. No doubt, Howe has angered those in his own journalistic movement by writing for BuzzFeed. Specifically, he wrote a story last April criticizing a Tea Party film. Breitbart News didn’t like that too much. Other than that, it’s unclear what mortal crime he committed to deserve such treatment from his own kind at Breitbart News.
The weirder thing about this is that Breitbart News did run a short blurb on the film on January 9, 2014, but later, oddly, were given the directive not to write about it. After the film premiered on Jan. 30, Dave Bossie, head of Citizens United, wrote a piece on Breitbart‘s contributor pages about conservative filmmaking and mentioned the film.
On February 3, Howe wrote a story about the film that landed on BuzzFeed’s front page. In it, he mentioned the story he wrote the previous year on conservative filmmaking that got him in hot water with some on the right. He specifically mentioned the flap with Breitbart.
The exact email Breitbart reporters recently received on February 4: “No mention of Ben Howe on Detroit today please. If you have any questions, give me a call.”
When asked for comment, Howe said, “I didn’t expect to get coverage from them, honestly. [John] Nolte got pretty mad at me last year. He’s head of the Big Hollywood thing. I have no ill will against Steve Bannon or any of them. I had heard [about the directive], but I decided the best thing for me to do when I heard was for me to stay out of it.”
Sources tell me Breitbart reporters often receive directives telling them not to write on specific topics or individuals, with no explanation offered.
Loesch lamented Howe’s film not getting attention from the right, saying on Twitter, “Disappointed to hear that some on our side don’t want @BenHowe ‘s film to receive attention. With conservatives like these who needs left?”
Good question.
“Just like all news organizations including The Daily Caller we don’t allocate time and energy to every story broken by other outlets,” said Breitbart spokesman Kurt Bardella in a phone discussion.