Watch the 'godfather' of fake news try to explain himself on Samantha Bee's show
This year, fake news stories marred the election and continue to propagate dangerous conspiracy theories. The man behind many of them? A 40-year-old Hillary Clinton voter who lives in a Los Angeles suburb with his family.
On Monday's Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Jestin Coler, who has created dozens of fake-news sites, sat down for an interview about the inflammatory stories. When called out for the information he's making up, he said "my point from the beginning was to educate consumers on content. How to identify these fake versus real (stories)."
He seems to distance himself from any effect these fake stories have on real life (such as in #Pizzagate) and sees himself as simply infiltrating conservative and alt-right readers' feeds with garbage and satire about their beliefs.
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The Bee segment came a few weeks after NPR tracked down Coler at his home and asked him more about this seamy business.
He told NPR, "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction."
One of his more egregious stories that made the rounds on Facebook was "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide" from Denverguardian.com. You'd think that's the Denver Guardian's website, but it's not. It's totally fake; one of the many fake news sites Coler created to look similar to legitimate online news sites like USAToday.com.co and WashingtonPost.com.co.
Coler's company, Disinfomedia, is one of the biggest fake-news businesses with about 25 domains including his main site, National Report, he told NPR. He has 20 to 25 writers, whose identities are kept private, and many of their right-wing conspiracy-based stories bring in millions of page views, which generate cash. He told NPR he makes anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 a month off the sites.
He has spoken to the media about the problem with fake news, but under a fake name, Allen Montgomery, NPR reported. This Montgomery character even has a fake Facebook profile.
On his LinkedIn account, Coler claims to have a bachelor's degree in political science and to have freelanced for various publications including International Yachtsman magazine.
He told the radio station he's considering getting out of the fake-news business, but it has nothing to do with the outcome of the election, which he doesn't feel complicit in. He predicts his departure wouldn't mean much. Someone else would step in and keep the fake news going.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
