The Care and Feeding of a Corporate Propagandist

Posted on Jun 21, 2012

ssoosay (CC BY 2.0)

Over the last decade, New Yorker columnist Malcolm Gladwell has managed to metamorphose from a trained shill for Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and the deregulatory movement into an intellectual darling of mainstream “liberal” America. How did he do it?

Journalist Yasha Levine takes us on a brief tour of Gladwell’s journalism education before highlighting some of his work as a “third party” (corporate code for media ally) journalist pushing the agenda of American business communities.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly

Yasha Levine at The Exiled:

Perhaps Americans would be less shocked by Malcolm Gladwell’s journalistic corruption if they were aware of his background. Gladwell was trained up in the same corporate-funded network of training and “education” institutes and outfits responsible for churning out the likes of Michelle Malkin, convicted criminal James O’Keefe, Dinesh D’Souza and countless other GOP corporate activists. The difference: Unlike Gladwell, they rarely hid their ideological willingness to take cash in exchange for promoting the corporate right’s agenda.

While a student at the University of Toronto, Gladwell’s admiration for Ronald Reagan led him into conservative activist circles. In 1982, while still an undergrad, he completed a 12-week training course at the National Journalism Center, a corporate-funded program created to counter the media’s alleged “anti-business bias” by molding college kids into corporate-friendly journalist-operatives and helping them infiltrate top-tier news media organizations. To quote Philip Morris, a major supporter of the National Journalism Center, its mission was to “train budding journalists in free market political and economic principles.” Over the years the National Journalism Center has produced hundreds of pro-business news media moles, including top-tier conservative talent like Ann Coulter and former Wall Street Journal columnist and editorial board member John Fund.

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

If you have trouble leaving a comment, review this help page. Still having problems? Let us know. If you find yourself moderated, take a moment to review our comment policy.