From the idea that "there are no conspiracies" to bogus Covid cures to election fraud claims, it's no exaggeration to say Steve Bannon peddles lies and misinformation on his War Room podcast. In fact, a study released yesterday by the Brookings Institution finds Bannon to be the fibbing champ of all political talk show hosts, even outscoring Glenn Beck and Charlie Kirk.
As former chief strategist to twice-impeached Donald Trump, his storytelling success should come as no surprise, but still, the proud con artist couldn't be more pleased with himself, saying "the Brookings report was a 'badge of honor,'" according to The New York Times.
From NYT:
In a study released on Thursday by the Brookings Institution, Mr. Bannon's show was crowned the top peddler of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements among political podcasts.
Researchers at Brookings downloaded and transcribed 36,603 podcast episodes from 79 political talk shows that had been released before Jan. 22, 2022. When researchers compared the shows' transcripts against a list of keywords and common falsehoods identified by fact checkers, they found that nearly 20 percent of Mr. Bannon's "War Room" episodes contained a false, misleading or unsubstantiated statement, more than shows by other conservatives like Glenn Beck and Charlie Kirk.
Overall, about 70 percent of the podcasts reviewed had shared at least one false or misleading claim, the researchers found. Conservative podcasters were 11 times as likely as liberal podcasters to share a claim that fact checkers could refute.
Mr. Kirk, a conservative activist and the founder of Turning Points USA, ranked second, with 17 percent of his episodes containing an unsubstantiated or false claim. "The Rush Limbaugh Show" (which ended when Mr. Limbaugh died in 2021) and "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show" shared third place, while "The Michael Savage Show" ranked fourth.
