Business Insider is a mainstream(-ish) business website with a staff of 45, which does, in the words of WSJ reporter Keach Hagey, is likelly to lead off any day with "a photograph of an attractive woman and followed by headlines about the end of the world and a slideshow featuring the latest iPhone rumors." That's from Henry Blodget's Second Act, WSJ, July 29, 2012. Blodget is the editor of Business Insider—the first act involved securities fraud, and a lifetime ban which prevents Blodget from participating directly in the financial industry.
On August 8, in the wake of the Sikh Temple Shooting, Business Insider launched an attack on VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow, titled Meet The Leaders Of America's Twisted White Power Movement, By Abby Rogers, [Email her | Twitter] August 8, 2012.
The part about Brimelow isn't actually that bad. Business Insider may have decided to tone it down, for fear of libel lawyers.
So where's the "twisted" part? Well, what's really twisted is the fact that Brimelow has been randomly placed on a list with a group that includesA former Forbes editor and National Review columnist, Brimelow fashioned himself as one of the leading figures in the anti-immigrant movement, according to the SPLC.
His views burst onto the national scene in 1995 when he published Alien Nation, a book that argues America should stick to its roots and stay white-dominated.
After he founded the Center for American Unity in 1999, Brimelow focused his efforts on a website called VDARE, named for Virginia Dare, the first white English child born in America, according to the SPLC.
"VDARE has come into existence because many great and developing issues of the day are no longer covered in the Establishment Media—whether liberal or 'conservative,'" Brimelow writes on the website.
"They're too different from the host population," Brimelow said about the recent wave of immigrants in the Western world in an interview with Michael Coren.
"It's not racism. It's nationalism, it's patriotism," he said of his views.[Links in original.]
Business Insider excuses this juxtaposition with the statement that
[W]e thought we'd check out who else has a spot in the SPLC's Intelligence Files. That list includes everyone from Ku Klux Klan leaders to former college professors.That's the craziness of the SPLC—they treat leaflets as a hate incident, and don't seem able to distinguish between criminals, journalists, and politicians. (All right, make up your own joke here, but its a serious problem for conservative journalists attacked by the SPLC—many of them lose their jobs.)Keep in mind, we are not accusing any of these people of crimes or implying that they might commit crimes. We are simply reporting their inclusion in SPLC's intelligence files, and why they merited that inclusion [Weaselling emphasis in original].
For the record, VDARE.com is not a "group" like the KKK, NCLR, or NAACP: it's a webzine. We're doing journalism here.
Business Insider, by contrast, is not. They should stick to stories like 8 Cool Things You Never Knew Your iPhone's Headphones Could Do.
p.s. the comment thread on the BI article is hearteningly scathing, with particularly strong contributions from, among others, our Nicholas Stix and the blogger Dennis Dale. Many thanks!
