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How to lose friends and influence media
Cashing in has never been easier. But at what cost?
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Wednesday afternoon some shocking—and frankly, pretty hilarious—news dropped: The indictment of two RT employees revealed that a few of the most dishonest, bad-faith, American conservative podcasters and meme creators were unwittingly working for the Russia-backed media network.
Though the Tenet Media hosts aren’t named in the indictment, context clues made it clear it was referring to Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, Tayler Hansen and Matt Christiansen. And the hosts themselves responded on their respective social media accounts with various versions of denying they had any knowledge of the $10 million Russian influence scheme.
A statement on the leaked DOJ indictment today:
A year ago, a media startup pitched my company to provide content as an independent contractor. Our lawyers negotiated a standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated. We are disturbed by the allegations in today’s… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson)
9:25 PM • Sep 4, 2024
Per NBC News:
The allegations came as part of a wide-ranging move by the Departments of Justice, State and Treasury to target what the Biden administration says are Russian government-sponsored attempts to manipulate U.S. public opinion ahead of the November election. That included charges against the two RT employees, who were accused of conspiring to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act in an indictment unsealed Wednesday in the Southern District of New York.
As NBC notes, many of the Tenet hosts have voiced anti-Ukraine views since Russia invaded the country. But as Ben Shapiro assures us, they’re just honest guys who were simply hoodwinked:
This is correct. @Daverubin and @Timcast and @bennyjohnson aren't the issue here -- they were apparently deceived by the company founders, who were allegedly taking Russian cash.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro)
2:56 AM • Sep 5, 2024
But really it’s the half-dozen dunces who get the last laugh: After all, they’re the ones raking in the dough. Pool, according to the indictment, negotiated $100,000 per episode of his show with the sketchy company. That’s the type of money unfathomable to your typical media outlet staffer, and truly the stuff of fairytales to most independent journalists.
As private equity firms swallow media outlets whole and independents fight for space and subscribers, a culture of deprivation has formed. Instead of having a “dream outlet” to work for, the dream is now simply to be employed. And this deprivation is what feeds the attitude that it’s ok to achieve success by any means necessary.
There is enormous money in being a shithead, and pennies for people with a conscience.
This post on Bluesky really summed it up:

Another shocking story of money and media dropped Wednesday that, while an entirely different circumstance from the Tenet Media disaster, showed progressives are not immune to sacrificing some morals for a payday.
Mehdi Hasan, former MSNBC host, celebrated the success of his new online media outlet, Zeteo News. Ordinarily I’d be thrilled to support an independent media venture, especially from someone known for speaking truth to power. But Zeteo is entirely powered entirely by Substack. Yes, the newsletter platform that refused—and continues to refuse—to remove Nazis.
As a refresher, on November 28th of last year, journalist Jonathan Katz published a piece in The Atlantic detailing instances of nazi/white nationalist Substack accounts that were actively making money via paid subscriptions on the platform. Shortly thereafter, I worked with Katz to create an open letter to the founders titled Substackers Against Nazis, which was then re-posted on nearly 250 other Substacks. It created so much noise that the Substack founders actually responded with what may be the single-most unhinged corporate response to public outcry:

Shortly after this baffling statement, I left Substack along with Katz and other high-profile users, like Casey Newton of Platformer. There were headlines about our campaign in The New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, The Hill, The Verge and others—in the last days of 2023 and the first weeks of the new year, this story consumed media circles. That’s why it was pretty astonishing to hear in April of this year that notoriously outspoken and progressive Hasan was launching a brand new media company…on Substack.
And it’s paid off: Just yesterday, The Washington Post published a piece celebrating Hasan’s success. “Four months in, Zeteo has pulled in 31,000 paid subscribers through the Substack platform, including more than 1,000 at the $500-and-up ‘founder’ level, accounting for about $3 million in annualized revenue,” the Post reported.
When you recall that Substack takes 10% of every paid subscription, that’s a whole lotta dough passing from the hands of progressive readers to Nazi-apologists.
Yet nowhere in the Post article is Substack’s Nazi problem referenced, despite the fact that the paper itself reported on it multiple times. And as Katz reported on his newsletter The Racket on Wednesday night, Substack’s Nazi problems very much persist.
Disgraced former Fox News host (is there any other kind?) Tucker Carlson recently interviewed historian Daryl Cooper on his little Twitter show, during which Cooper defended Hitler by calling Winston Churchill “the chief villain of the Second World War”. Per Katz:
What many people don’t know (or don’t remember) is that Cooper, the host of the “Martyr Made” podcast, was already involved in another Nazi-related controversy with a social media platform less than a year ago. He made a cameo last year when I reported on how Substack, the newsletter-hosting platform and Twitter clone, was promoting and profiting off of overtly white-supremacist, antisemitic, and explicitly Nazi blogs
By Katz’s calculations, Cooper is making at least $500,000 on an annual basis, but likely more. And just like Hasan, Cooper is sharing 10% of his revenue with Substack.
As Casey Newton posted on Threads on Wednesday: “To all my progressive friends who are still on Substack — you might want to know that the guy downplaying the Holocaust and saying Nazis are humane here has a monetized Substack with more than 100,000 followers.”
Hasan has never publicly commented on Substack’s Nazi problem, and continues to ignore questions about it in the replies of his social media posts.
I couldn’t possibly speak to Hasan’s motivations or incentives, or the degree to which he knew about Substack’s reputation before inking this deal. And it’s impossible for me to say whether or not the people of Tenet Media knew they were working for Russian agents when they signed on. But I believe your work is defined, in part, by the company you keep. And it’s incumbent upon you to take a look around and understand how your company is defining you.
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