Libertarianism
Shafer has written supportively of libertarianism. He wrote, "Traditionally, the state censors and marginalizes voices while private businesses tend to remain tolerant." [2] In 2000, he explained his political views as follows: "I agree with the Libertarian Party platform: much smaller government, much lower taxes, an end to income redistribution, repeal of the drug laws, fewer gun laws, a dismantled welfare state, an end to corporate subsidies, First Amendment absolutism, a scaled-back warfare state. (You get the idea.)" [3]
Consistent with this perspective, on 20 April 2020 Shafer expressed opposition to the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, saying, "You wouldn't put a dead man on a ventilator, would you?" [4]
David McAlister Barry is an American author and columnist who wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for the Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. He has also written numerous books of humor and parody, as well as comic novels and children's novels. Barry's honors include the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary (1988) and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism (2005).
Gerald Leo Posner is an American investigative journalist and author of thirteen books, including Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993), which explores the John F. Kennedy assassination, and Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998), about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. A plagiarism scandal involving articles that Posner wrote for The Daily Beast and his book Miami Babylon arose in 2010. In 2015, the Chicago Tribune called Posner "a merciless little pitbull of an investigator."
Daniel Radosh is an American journalist and blogger. Radosh is a senior writer for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Previously, he was a staff writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and a contributing editor at The Week. He writes occasionally for The New Yorker. His writing has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, GQ, Mademoiselle, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Might, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Playboy, Radar, Salon, Slate, and other publications. From 2000 to 2001, he was a senior editor for Modern Humorist. In the 1990s he was a writer and editor at Spy. Radosh began his writing career at Youth Communication in 1985, where as a high school student he published more than a dozen stories in New Youth Connections, a magazine by and for New York City teenagers.
Monica Elizabeth Crowley is the former Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. She has been a political commentator and lobbyist. She was a Fox News contributor, where she worked from 1996 to 2017. She is a former online opinion editor for The Washington Times and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Benjamin Domenech is an American writer, blogger, editor, publisher, and television commentator. He is the co-founder and publisher of The Federalist and host of The Federalist Radio Hour, and writes The Transom, a daily subscription newsletter for political insiders. He also co-founded the RedState group blog. He joined Fox News as a commentator in 2021.
Jill Ellen Abramson is an American author, journalist, and academic. She is best known as the former executive editor of The New York Times; Abramson held that position from September 2011 to May 2014. She was the first female executive editor in the paper's 160-year history. Abramson joined the New York Times in 1997, working as the Washington bureau chief and managing editor before being named as executive editor. She previously worked for The Wall Street Journal as an investigative reporter and a deputy bureau chief.
The Daily Beast is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. Founded in 2008, the website is owned by IAC Inc.
Spencer Ackerman is an American journalist and writer. Focusing primarily on national security, he began his career at The New Republic in 2002 before writing for Wired, The Guardian and The Daily Beast.
The Washington City Paper is a U.S. alternative weekly newspaper serving the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area since 1981. The City Paper is distributed on Thursdays; its average circulation in 2006 was 85,588. The paper's editorial mix is focused on local news and arts. It is owned by Mark Ein, who bought it in 2017.
Johann Eduard Hari is a British-Swiss writer and journalist who wrote for The Independent and The Huffington Post. In 2011, Hari was suspended from The Independent and later resigned, after admitting to plagiarism and fabrications dating back to 2001 and making malicious edits to the Wikipedia pages of journalists who had criticised his conduct. He has since written books on the topics of depression, the war on drugs, and the effect of technology on attention spans, which have attracted criticism for poorly evidenced claims, misrepresented sources, and bad citational practices.
The Montgomery County Bulletin or simply The Bulletin was a free alternative weekly newspaper distributed in Montgomery County, Texas; a suburban county north of Houston. It claimed a circulation of 20,000 copies before being forced out of business in 2008 due to evidence of massive plagiarism.
Richard Allen Posner is an American legal scholar who served as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1981 to 2017. A senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Posner is a leading figure in the field of law and economics, and was identified by The Journal of Legal Studies as the most-cited legal scholar of the 20th century. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential legal scholars in the United States.
David Weigel is an American journalist. He works for Semafor. Weigel previously covered politics for The Washington Post,Slate, and Bloomberg Politics and is a contributing editor for Reason magazine.
Zachery "Zach" Kouwe is a communications strategist and former financial journalist. He is known for serving as a media and strategic communications advisor to corporations and financial firms including activist shareholders and institutional investors and has worked as an advisor for the corporate whistleblower attorney Jordan A. Thomas.
Ann Louise Bardach [A.L. Bardach] is an American journalist and non-fiction author. Bardach is best known for her work on Cuba and Miami and was called "the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami," by the Columbia Journalism Review, having interviewed dozens of key players including Fidel Castro, sister Juanita Castro, anti-Castro militant legend Luis Posada Carriles, CIA and Watergate plumber E. Howard Hunt, anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch and CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was present for the assassination of Che Guevara.
Andrew Kaczynski is an American journalist and a political reporter for CNN. He became well known in 2011 by posting old video clips of politicians, often of them making statements contrary to their current political positions, to YouTube. He was described as "the [2012] Republican primaries' most influential amateur opposition researcher".
A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, and Jayson Blair at The New York Times is a 2013 documentary film by director/producer Samantha Grant about Jayson Blair, a former journalist at The New York Times who was discovered copying the work of other reporters in 2003. The film explores Blair's rise as a promising young journalist and his decline into a spiral of lies, drugs, and mental illness. The documentary also explores how Blair's deception was handled by The Times' editorial staff and how many other media outlets covered the scandal as an issue as race, asserting that Blair's plagiarism was overlooked by superiors because he is African American.
Benny Johnson is an American conservative political commentator and YouTuber, currently serving as chief creative officer at Turning Point USA, along with hosting The Benny Show on YouTube.
Trump 101: The Way to Success is a book credited to Donald Trump and written by ghostwriter Meredith McIver. The first edition was published in hardcover format by Wiley in 2006. The book contains twenty-four chapters imparting advice on business acumen with quotations included from Trump. The authors caution the reader about the inherent risks seen in business deals, and advise individuals to promptly deal with conflicts. Trump recommends other books including The Art of War and The Power of Positive Thinking, as well as his company Trump University.
The Local Journalism Sustainability Act is a bill introduced into the United States House of Representatives on July 16, 2020, by Representative Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ-2) that would give tax credits to local newspapers. It was introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, but was never voted on in the House. It was supported by the media and newspaper industry.
