The fallout from a federal indictment continues across right-wing American media.
Ben Smith at Semafor:
A conservative American media company has fired one of the YouTubers implicated in an alleged Russian influence operation exposed by the US Department of Justice this week.
“Lauren Chen was an independent contractor, whose contract has been terminated,” Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon said in an email to Semafor.
Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan, are the co-founders of Tenet Media, a previously obscure media company that paid eye-popping sums to right-wing influencers to produce videos that echoed Russian propaganda and other right-wing talking points, according to an indictment.
She also contributed videos to BlazeTV, an arm of Blaze Media, which was founded by the former Fox News host and talk radio figure Glenn Beck, which was not mentioned in Wednesday’s indictment.
The two Americans were also not named in the indictment, which instead charged two Russians associated with the state-owned Russia Today with money laundering and violating foreign influence laws.
Blaze Media issues pink-slip to Lauren Chen, who was named in a DOJ investigation on Russian propaganda.
Chen has hosted shows on BlazeTV (and CRTV prior to the CRTV/TheBlazeTV merger).
The duo are joining TheBlaze and CRTV to create Blaze Media, which they say will reach 165 million people via television, digital platforms and social media.
Paul Bond at THR:
The duo are joining TheBlaze and CRTV to create Blaze Media, which they say will reach 165 million people via television, digital platforms and social media.
Glenn Beck and Mark Levin are teaming up by merging TheBlaze and CRTV to create a conservative-media entity dubbed Blaze Media, which they say will reach 165 million people via television, digital platforms and social media.
Beck and Levin are set to officially announce what they are calling a merger of equals on Monday, but Beck tells The Hollywood Reporter that the move could be just a next step at building a powerhouse, independent media company.
“This is the beginning of scale,” he says. “Anyone who loves the Bill of Rights and pursues honesty, I want them all in. We’re an open book. Let’s talk,” he says.
Beck founded TheBlaze in 2011 after leaving Fox News, where his show drew a large audience though was constantly attacked by progressive groups that discouraged advertisers. TheBlaze grew quickly, but in recent years has scaled back in order to preserve money.
TheBlaze is seen on Dish Network, Verizon Fios, Roku, SlingTV and several regional cable outlets, and it is heard on Sirius XM Radio, iHeartRadio and elsewhere. Next year, it will launch a live tour with the working title, Blaze Live.
Levin, a former attorney in Ronald Reagan’s presidential administration, is a nationally syndicated radio host, and he hosts Life, Liberty & Levin on Fox News. He founded LevinTV and the digital outlet morphed into CRTV, the “CR” standing for “Conservative Review.”
Beyond Levin, some of the talent at CRTV includes Michelle Malkin, Steven Crowder, Matt Kibbe, Deneen Borelli, Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame and Gavin McInnes, the co-founder of Vice Media who hosts a show called, Get Off My Lawn, at CRTV.
Blaze Media will be run by Tyler Cardon and Gaston Mooney, who were named co-presidents of the merged company. Previously, Mooney was president of CRTV and Cardon was president of TheBlaze.
“Tens of millions of Americans have had it with the biased, ideologically driven mainstream media outlets that sanctimoniously advance their own agendas under the guise of ‘news’ and ‘journalism.’ Conservatives actually believe in a free press and the rest of the Constitution,” said Levin.
He added that his intention with the merger is “to further expand and offer the public an alternative to liberal media group-think.”
Blaze Media will compete with conservative outlets like Breitbart News, The Daily Caller (co-founded by Tucker Carlson) and Salem Media Group, a publicly traded company that is considered the industry leader in talk radio. It will also compete with Daily Wire, founded by Ben Shapiro, a former Breitbart editor who had also considered merging with Beck’s company.
“I’d still like to do that,” Beck said. “I’m a big fan of what Ben has built.”
Blaze Media will be headquartered in Dallas at Beck’s facilities, but he says that that’s only a technicality as it will operate all over the country. “Dallas will be the epicenter, but we’ll be like a movie studio, like United Artists. It’s a much better system for the talent.”
The Blaze has been going through a rocky stretch, laying off about 20 percent of its staffers and losing talent like NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch and Tomi Lahren, the latter after publicly feuding with Beck over pro-choice remarks she made on her former show. Beck says, though, the incident was mis-reported without context.
“We’re a different kind of media company, without a centralized command and control,” he says. “There’s no network you have to confer with. Talent is free to express their opinions, whether I agree with them or not.”
Financial terms of the merger were not disclosed, but Beck acknowledges his company had bled some red ink, though it has been profitable for about 12 months.
“We worked hard to make sure we’re in the black. If we had spoken to CRTV a couple of years ago, it would have been a different story,” he says. “We talked about a merger when neither of us need it. That’s the best time.”
Beck said four years ago he was moving into movie production, though it hadn’t been financially feasible, until now.
“The merger will help those efforts,” he said. “First and foremost, I’m an artist and a storyteller.”
Dana Loesch is ending her show on The Blaze after four years. The conservative host and NRA spokesperson made the announcement at the close of her broadcast on Monday.
Joe DePaolo at Mediaite:
Dana Loesch is ending her show on The Blaze after four years.
The conservative host and NRA spokesperson made the announcement at the close of her broadcast on Monday.
"A free and diverse press, a bedrock principle of American democracy, will be crippled by this proposed merger."
Eric Boehlert at Shareblue:
In a surprising twist, many of the voices speaking out against the emergence of a “Trump TV” behemoth are coming from Donald Trump’s side of the aisle.
Christopher Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax and a close Trump ally, slammed the pending merger between the Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media, insisting that the move “cannot be justified” and that it will “harm” American democracy.
And Ruddy is not the only conservative media player rejecting the Trump-friendly, $3.9 billion deal currently pending at the Federal Communications Commission.
Former Fox News host Glenn Beck signed off on a letter to congressional leaders that denounced the proposed merger for posing a threat to “the very freedom of expression cherished by people regardless of political persuasion.”
And Huffington Post reports that Charles Herring, the CEO of One America News, which has emerged as a Trump White House media darling, is also warning about the proposed Trump TV deal. “The real concern here is if you have an entity with excessive, unbalanced power in the marketplace, which Sinclair arguably has now,” Herring said.
The intramural fighting within the conservative media community highlights how contentious and controversial the looming Sinclair/Tribune merger is.
In yet another sign that the Sinclair/Tribune merger is an anti-American farce, even certain conservative TV outlets (Newsmax TV, TheBlazeTV, OANN) are coming out against the merger.
Conservative firebrand Tomi Lahren has reportedly been “banned permanently” from TheBlaze, where she hosted a popular but controversial TV show. Lahren was previously suspended after she declared she was pro-choice, despite suggesting numerous times on her show that she is pro-life. An insider at TheBlaze, founded by conservative radio host Glenn Beck, told The New York Post that Beck is “reminding the world of his conservative principles by sidelining Tomi after she insulted conservatives by calling them hypocrites.” Earlier this month during an appearance on The View, Lahren declared that she was pro-choice because she thought it was “hypocritical” for conservatives to be in favor of limited government but opposed to abortion.
