

But, as clips of these interviews show, he often gave his guests the final word, seldom endorsed opposing views and rarely cautioned his audience to wait for more information. Bannon, for example, frequently prodded for evidence in interviews with guests, conveying an apparent search for truth. “What we wind up with is everybody is a health expert all because they saw some study,” Dr. They said Covid could be treated or cured using ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, two existing drugs, despite evidence that they were not effective. A roster of anti-vaccination activists and armchair experts pushed baseless theories about the coronavirus and Covid-19 vaccines. Many podcast hosts, she said, leveraged fears over the pandemic to captivate anxious Americans. Wirtschafter said conservative shows far outpaced liberal ones in sharing misleading information. Some liberal podcasters or their guests also shared false or unsubstantiated statements, including statements by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York about child poverty or immigration, which fact checkers rated “false” or “mostly false.”īut Dr. Bannon’s “War Room.” A spokesman for Apple declined to comment. Ivy Choi, a spokeswoman for Google, said the company did not recommend shows through its algorithm if they contained “harmful misinformation,” including Mr.

WAR ROOM BANNON TODAY SOFTWARE
The companies have policies that ban hateful language or content that might incite violence, but researchers said those policies were vague and poorly enforced, allowing false content to spread.Īpple’s and Google’s software connects listeners with podcasts using an algorithm that surfaces recommended shows. “But what does stand out, particularly for a show like Bannon’s ‘War Room’ and a few others, is just how frequently this type of content appears,” she said. Valerie Wirtschafter, a senior data analyst at Brookings who led the research, said some falsehoods and errors were expected to slip through on talk shows, where conversations were typically recorded live. Limbaugh died in 2021) and “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show” shared third place, while “The Michael Savage Show” ranked fourth. “The Rush Limbaugh Show” (which ended when Mr. Kirk, a conservative activist and the founder of Turning Point USA, ranked second, with 17 percent of his episodes containing an unsubstantiated or false claim. Conservative podcasters were 11 times as likely as liberal podcasters to share a claim that fact checkers could refute. Overall, about 70 percent of the podcasts reviewed had shared at least one false or misleading claim, the researchers found. Bannon’s “War Room” episodes contained a false, misleading or unsubstantiated statement, more than shows by other conservatives like Glenn Beck and Charlie Kirk. 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. Researchers at Brookings downloaded and transcribed 36,603 podcast episodes from 79 political talk shows that had been released before Jan. Bannon’s show was crowned the top peddler of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements among political podcasts. In a study released on Thursday by the Brookings Institution, Mr. Bannon faces various legal challenges, including a guilty verdict last year for contempt of Congress and accusations from Manhattan prosecutors that he defrauded conservative donors. His hourlong “War Room” podcast episodes are released at least twice daily, even as Mr. Trump into a prominent role as a right-wing personality. Bannon has spent the past few years parlaying his stint as the chief strategist for former President Donald J. Bannon concluded minutes later, in what has become his show’s catchphrase. “There are no conspiracies, but there are no coincidences,” Mr. ( Nope.) Bill Gates owns a demonic patent for a cryptocurrency that is injected into your body. ( False.) Concentration camps are coming. ( No.) Covid vaccines are filled with fetal tissue. Covid is “100 percent treatable” with hydroxychloroquine and other drugs. Clark rattled off one false and misleading statement after another. Bannon, the White House strategist turned podcaster, was explaining the latest Covid-19 developments in 2021, he passed the microphone to a special guest: Clay Clark, an evangelist and anti-vaccine activist.įor nearly 10 minutes, Mr.
