 | |
| Founded | September 2012 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Kenneth Lerer Eric Hippeau Brian Bedol Fred Harman |
| Headquarters | New York City, New York, U.S. |
Key people | Sharon Mussalli (CEO) |
| Website | NowMedia Network |
NowThis Media is an American progressive [1] [2] social media-focused media organization founded in 2012. [3] [4] [5] The company is specialized in creating short-form videos. [6] Their target audience are Gen Z and Millennials. [7]
NowThis was founded by HuffPost co-founder and former chairman Kenneth Lerer and former Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau in September 2012. [8] NowThis originally focused exclusively on social-media platforms, such as Facebook, having announced in 2015 that it would not have a homepage. By 2018, it had changed this position. [9]
On December 8, 2015, NowThis raised $16.2m in Series D funding. By this time, the company said that 68% of its audience were millennials between the ages of 18 and 34. It was announced that this funding would be used to launch more focused channels. [10] Between 2012 and 2014, the editor-in-chief was Edward O'Keefe, who previously was the executive producer at ABC News Digital. As of 2013, NowThis produced about 50 segments per day and received about 15–20 million views per month. [11]
In 2016, NowThis joined with The Dodo, Thrillist , and Seeker to form Group Nine Media, which was acquired by Vox Media in February 2022. [12] [13]
In June 2020, numerous accusations of sexual misconduct were levied at NowThis associate producer Jackson Davis after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quote-tweeted a graphic he created. [14] [15] NowThis suspended Davis. Following an external investigation, he was removed from the company. [16]
In April 2023, it was announced that NowThis would be spun off as a separate company from Vox Media. [17] In April 2023 NowThis was purchased by the non profit Accelerate Change [17] and in December of the same year announced that Sharon Mussalli was appointed as their first female CEO [18] . In March of 2024 Adweek announced the creation of NowMedia Networks, an identity driven media network reaching 190 million people that is the combination of publishers NowThis, PushBlack, Pulso, ParentsTogether, Feminist, and PlusMas. [19]
In February 2024, it was announced that NowThis had laid off roughly 50% of its workforce. [20] The organization said that the staff layoffs were part of a “broader initiative to realign our resources and structure to ensure a long-term sustainable business in the evolving media landscape.” [21]
In October 2024, NowThis announced their inaugural Advisory Board. [22] [23] The Advisory Board is made up of business leaders with unique understanding of the GenZ audience.
In November 2024, NowThis underwent a second round of layoffs, which predominantly affected unionized employees. These layoffs were reported by current and former employees of the organization, though the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), which represents the unionized staff, has not released an official statement on the matter. [24] [25]
NowThis's content is targeted at left-leaning Millennials [7] An analysis from BuzzFeed News found that NowThis was the most popular left-leaning site on Facebook between 2015 and 2017; along with Occupy Democrats, it accounted for half of the 50 top posts on Facebook. [26] According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism NowThis' videos are primarily emotion-driven in order to generate views and shares [27] and the group been accused of making partisan content. [28] [29]
In 2015, NowThis published a conspiracy theory that claimed CNN deleted a poll of Facebook users asserting that most participants thought that Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the first 2016 Democratic Party presidential debate. NowThis created a video titled "It looks like CNN is trying to help Hillary look good, even if that means deleting polls." PolitiFact found that CNN did not delete the poll in question and in fact displayed the results of the poll during its broadcast and also published the poll on its Facebook page. The claim was rated as "Pants on Fire" false by PolitiFact. [30]
After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, NowThis posted a clip of CNN commentator Van Jones giving a speech about the election results on their social media. The posted clip generated over 23 million views on Facebook, and NowThis included its own logo in the upper corner, not CNN's. CNN accused NowThis of violating their intellectual property rights and stated that video "was used without attribution or permission", and they were "exploring [their] options with regards to NowThis, Facebook and Twitter." NowThis removed the clip from their Facebook, while it remained on their Twitter. [31]
During the 2016 United States presidential election, NowThis repeatedly claimed that Trump lied about Bill Clinton signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) using videos posted on Facebook and YouTube. PolitiFact found that Bill Clinton signed the final version of the NAFTA as Trump had stated, and rated the claim false. [32]
In September 2019, NowThis tweeted out that "Republicans in North Carolina used a 9/11 memorial to trick Democrats into missing a key vote", which was later shared by Senator Elizabeth Warren. PolitiFact rated the claim false and discovered only one Democrat was at a 9/11 memorial during the time North Carolina Republicans held a controversial budget vote. NowThis did not correct their claim. [33]
In January 2020, NowThis removed a segment of a video they posted where a George Washington University student falsely claimed that Holocaust diarist Anne Frank did not die in a concentration camp. Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in either February or March 1945. [34] [35]
The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American multinational conservative news and political commentary television channel and website based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owned by the Fox Corporation. It is the most-watched cable news network in the U.S., and as of 2023 generates approximately 70% of its parent company's pre-tax profit. The channel broadcasts primarily from studios at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan. Fox News provides a service to 86 countries and territories, with international broadcasts featuring Fox Extra segments during advertising breaks.
Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after the text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such checking done in-house by the publisher to prevent inaccurate content from being published; when the text is analyzed by a third party, the process is called external fact-checking.
Louis Carl Dobbs was an American conservative political commentator, author, and television host who presented Moneyline from 1980 to 2009 and 2011 to 2021. From 2021 until his death, he hosted The Great America Show on iHeartRadio and loudobbs.com.
Breitbart News Network is an American far-right syndicated news, opinion, and commentary website founded in mid-2007 by American conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. Its content has been described as misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist by various academics and journalists. The site has published a number of conspiracy theories and intentionally misleading stories. Posts originating from the Breitbart News Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.
BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Kenneth Lerer, co-founder and chairman of The Huffington Post, started as a co-founder and investor in BuzzFeed and is now the executive chairman.
PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the Tampa Bay Times, with reporters and editors from the newspaper and its affiliated news media partners reporting on the accuracy of statements made by elected officials, candidates, their staffs, lobbyists, interest groups and others involved in U.S. politics. Its journalists select original statements to evaluate and then publish their findings on the PolitiFact.com website, where each statement receives a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The ratings range from "True" for statements the journalists deem as accurate to "Pants on Fire" for claims the journalists deem as "not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim".
The Federalist is an American conservative online magazine and podcast that covers politics, policy, culture, and religion, and publishes a newsletter. The site was co-founded by Ben Domenech and Sean Davis and launched in September 2013.
Vox is an American news and opinion website owned by Vox Media. The website was founded in April 2014 by Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell, and is noted for its concept of explanatory journalism. Vox's media presence also includes a YouTube channel, several podcasts, and a show presented on Netflix. Vox has been described as left-leaning and progressive.
BuzzFeed News was an American news website published by BuzzFeed beginning in 2011. It ceased posting new hard news content in May 2023. It published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was strongly criticized, and the FinCEN Files. It won the George Polk Award, The Sidney Award, the National Magazine Award, the National Press Foundation award, and the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
Fake news websites are websites on the Internet that deliberately publish fake news—hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation purporting to be real news—often using social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect. Unlike news satire, these websites deliberately seek to be perceived as legitimate and taken at face value, often for financial or political gain. Fake news websites monetize their content by exploiting the vulnerabilities of programmatic ad trading, which is a type of online advertising in which ads are traded through machine-to-machine auction in a real-time bidding system.
Fake news websites target United States audiences by using disinformation to create or inflame controversial topics such as the 2016 election. Most fake news websites target readers by impersonating or pretending to be real news organizations, which can lead to legitimate news organizations further spreading their message. Most notable in the media are the many websites that made completely false claims about political candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as part of a larger campaign to gain viewers and ad revenue or spread disinformation. Additionally, satire websites have received criticism for not properly notifying readers that they are publishing false or satirical content, since many readers have been duped by seemingly legitimate articles.
Fake news or information disorder is false or misleading information claiming the aesthetics and legitimacy of news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue. Although false news has always been spread throughout history, the term fake news was first used in the 1890s when sensational reports in newspapers were common. Nevertheless, the term does not have a fixed definition and has been applied broadly to any type of false information presented as news. It has also been used by high-profile people to apply to any news unfavorable to them. Further, disinformation involves spreading false information with harmful intent and is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign actors, particularly during elections. In some definitions, fake news includes satirical articles misinterpreted as genuine, and articles that employ sensationalist or clickbait headlines that are not supported in the text. Because of this diversity of types of false news, researchers are beginning to favour information disorder as a more neutral and informative term.
The Gateway Pundit (TGP) is an American far-right fake news website. The website is known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.
Donald Trump's use of social media attracted attention worldwide since he joined Twitter in May 2009. Over nearly twelve years, Trump tweeted around 57,000 times, including about 8,000 times during the 2016 election campaign and over 25,000 times during his presidency. The White House said the tweets should be considered official statements. When Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 during the final days of his term, his handle @realDonaldTrump had over 88.9 million followers. On November 19, 2022, Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, reinstated his account, although Trump had stated he would not use it in favor of his own social media platform, Truth Social. The first tweet since 2021 was made in August 2023 about his mugshot from Fulton County Jail, but the account remained inactive until he tweeted again in August 2024.
The Palmer Report is an American liberal fake news website, founded in 2016 by Bill Palmer. It is known for making unsubstantiated or false claims, producing hyperpartisan content, and publishing conspiracy theories, especially on matters relating to Donald Trump and Russia. Fact-checkers have debunked numerous Palmer Report stories, and organizations including the Columbia Journalism Review and the German Marshall Fund have listed the site among false content producers or biased websites.
Occupy Democrats is an American left-wing media outlet built around a Facebook page and corresponding website. Established in 2012, it publishes hyperpartisan content, clickbait, and false information. Posts originating from the Occupy Democrats Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.
During and after his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post's fact-checkers documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term, an average of about 21 per day. The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of 6 per day. Commentators and fact-checkers have described Trump's mendacity as unprecedented in American politics, and the consistency of falsehoods a distinctive part of his business and political identities. Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found significant evidence of an intent to deceive.
From 2017 through 2021, Donald Trump was the 45th president of the United States. In November 2024, he won the 2024 presidential election, and his second term will start in 2025.
Ryan Fournier is an American conservative activist and political commentator. He is the co-founder and acting national chairman of the American youth group Students for Trump.
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