I challenge you to find a more remarkable parenthetical disclosure in a news article than the one offered in BuzzFeed’s story about the state of the late Andrew Breitbart’s media empire:
(Breitbart.com has described BuzzFeed as “a left-wing rag;” has turned our editor’s name into a verb, “Bensmithing,” meant to describe a sophisticated form of journalistic malpractice in which damaging facts about Democrats are reported as a means of covering them up; has repeatedly referred to this reporter as a “media-approved Mormon;” has accused us of editing a hug out of a video to protect President Obama; has accused us of conducting “partisan strategy” to protect President Obama; and has written, according to a search of their site, 396 posts attacking BuzzFeed.)
The disclosure is a testament to Breitbart.com’s tireless criticisms of BuzzFeed, and to BuzzFeed’s efforts to catalogue and disclose said criticisms when writing about Breitbart.
Slate’s Farhad Manjoo celebrated it in his tweet about the story:
Must-read parenthetical in this @buzzfeed piece on Breitbart.fm4.fm/Vwadoj
— Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) October 22, 2012
I emailed BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith and the writer, McKay Coppins, to see if they can add detail.
“It’s traditional for fair-minded reporters to disclose potential conflicts of interest, and this was in line with that tradition,” Smith replied.
I asked him who was given the unfortunate task of tallying up all of the critical Breitbart posts and Smith said simply, “McKay reported the story.”
If I were the folks at Breitbart, I’d request a recount.
