(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Breitbart Ramps Up Anti-ESG Coverage With Search-Hacking Sponsored Content [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-31 Lately, we've noticed that bare-bones Breitbart, having lost a ton of its advertising revenue in recent years, has taken a real interest in the right-wing fight against Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards. While it would certainly make sense for the outlet to oppose ESG measures, given its billionaire-backing , its laundering of white supremacy , and its loyalty to Donald Trump, these days it doesn't have too robust of a reporting staff, so what it covers is a pretty clear indication of what it cares about. And since it parted ways with James Delingpole last year, it hasn't cared much about climate. The fact that Breitbart is suddenly taking up arms in the anti-ESG culture war could have been the result of its simply reporting on what's happening in the conservative manufactured-controversy space, and at first, that's how it might've seemed. But then we noticed some ‘subtle’ signs that Breitbart is taking cues (and sponsorship money) from some bigger fish. For example, this piece on a newly sworn-in Senator from Alabama casting her first vote to oppose a DOD pick caught our eye as odd. Why would Breitbart choose to make a whole story out of a new Senator's first vote? If the politician were one of the outlet's favored extremists in cahoots with Steve Bannon that might make sense, but Sen. Katie Britt only got an endorsement from Trump once it looked like she'd beat the primary candidate that Trump initially backed, so Breitbart doesn't have an obvious reason to attack. So why did an editor assign Breitbart reporter Jacob Bliss to write up the supposed news about one of 35 Republicans voting against confirming a perfectly qualified nominee for a Department of Defense position? This is perhaps because the reason for her nay vote, per Bliss, was because of the nominee’s "support from the radical environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policy movement." Cribbing from the fossil fuel industry-funded Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal opposition research hit , Bliss scathingly reports that the nominee, Brendan Owens, has worked on "delivering equity, health and decarbonization." The horror! Seriously though, Breitbart's echo of the Daily Signal and otherwise unjustified coverage of Britt's statement suggest its editorial motivations may not be purely journalistic. The second red flag was another story from Jacob Bliss published on the 23rd, which is slightly more justifiably news-y. Twenty-one state attorneys general issued an anti-ESG letter to a pair of financial institutes, and, unlike its usual style of relying on other outlet's reporting, Breitbart actually had the letter itself, posted to Scribd and everything. In addition to quoting Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, Bliss also quotes a second person, and attributes both of their comments to "a statement last week." Bliss's sole additional source, who also issued a statement about the AG move last week, was Will Hild, head of Consumers' Research, the group The Washington Post just reported as being described as "a right-wing front group with anonymous donors seeking to stall action on climate change." Consumers’ Research has gotten millions of dollars to wage this anti-ESG campaign, and it funds groups like the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) to do so. Then what do we see two days after Bliss's two ESG posts at Breitbart? A headline blaring that " Leftist elites have a new woke weapon aimed at your family ," complete with the disclosure that "the following content is sponsored by the State Financial Officers Foundation ." And even as far as sponsored content goes, this one's a doozy. The transcript of the accompanying 1-minute video about how "ESG policies are a backdoor that progressives use to invade our economy" includes a whopping 17 links to SFOF's " OurMoneyYourValues " website! Phrases like the obvious "ESG" and "ESG policies" are linked, as well as "ESG agenda," "ESG claims," and even the end of the question "So how exactly does ESG work?" Maybe it was a mistake, and all those links are supposed to go to rigorous independent sources verifying SFOF's wild claims. More likely, though, is that this is a hamfisted attempt to game Google search results to send more traffic to the SFOF's anti-ESG website by publishing content that links the website with the hoped-for search terms. That would drive up the backlink numbers Google's algorithm uses to determine search results, making it look like the website has a lot of value because there are a lot of links pointing to it. So not only does Breitbart appear to be the newest recruit in the anti-ESG fight, but now they've even found a way to produce sponsored content with even less integrity than other outlets! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/31/2150280/-Breitbart-Ramps-Up-Anti-ESG-Coverage-With-Search-Hacking-Sponsored-Content Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/