Infowars Knew What It Was Doing Was Bad
Figures in editorial positions within Infowars were aware that Alex was out of line about Sandy Hook
During the course of his Sandy Hook trials, Alex Jones worked pretty hard to create the impression that all he did in terms of covering the shooting was to interview a couple people (i.e. Wolfgang Halbig, Steve Pieczenik, James Tracy), and discuss some anomalies with the shooting, many (all) of which he’s since learned were bogus.
It’s all incredibly innocent, and as far as anyone at Infowars knew, they weren’t doing anything wrong. They were just covering the things the internet was talking about.
This is obviously a complete fiction, but upon reviewing the emails turned over in his Texas case, it becomes clear how aware figures at Infowars in editorial positions were about how inappropriate Alex’s actions were.
And it starts as early as a week after the shooting.
Almost immediately, Alex began playing around with theories that one of the fathers of a child who was murdered at the school was an actor. He had found some selectively edited clips of Robbie Parker speaking to the press, and Alex had determined that his behavior was not in line with what he’d expect from a grieving parent.
In his show from 12/19/12, a mere five days after the shooting, Alex went on a bit of a rant about how Parker appeared to be an actor.
“A smile of absolute satisfaction.”
It was way out of line, and it must have been obvious to other workers at Infowars.
Despite being someone who would work at Infowars, CJ definitely could tell that the way Alex mocked a man who just lost his child was something they needed to cut out of that episode. There may be no way to control Alex and get him to act like a decent person, but you can do things like this to try to clean up after him, by censoring sections of his show that are indefensible and probably could lead to legal action.
And this doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident.
In his depositions, Alex Jones tried to paint the picture of Infowars as a completely disorganized business. People were writing whatever they wanted, he said whatever he wanted on the show, and then no one kept track of or censored what was said or written. There just wasn’t any editorial oversight of anything.
But that is not true. Reviewing these emails makes clear how not true this is. In fact, Infowars is very organized, and they appear to have kept show logs for Alex’s broadcasts, cataloging what he talked about segment by segment. These logs list his guests, what they came on to talk about, and what products Alex plugged.
On February 12, 2015, Alex and Rob Dew took to the show and ended up broadcasting the address of one of the shooting victims’ father. Lenny Pozner had tried to fight back against conspiracy theorists saying that he and his murdered son were actors, so he began filing copyright strikes against outlets using pictures of his son. In this process, he filed copyright claims against Infowars, and it led to their YouTube channel getting a strike.
This infuriated Alex, and he decided to lash out. One of the ways he did that was to broadcast Pozner’s mailing address, as well as showing Google Maps images of the location. It was a very clear instance of trying to direct the audience to go there and “get to the bottom of” what was going on.
Normal observers would see Alex and Rob’s actions on that episode and be shocked. And, it turns out that the editorial department at Infowars may have had similar feelings.
When they were sending out the daily show log for this episode, a very emphatic point is made that, not only should a section of the show be cut out, but that none of it should be posted on YouTube.
In the attached log, it’s made even more emphatic.
The people at Infowars were fully aware that what Alex was doing wasn’t okay, and that there was a need for damage control. In essence, they needed to save Alex from himself.
Part of this could be construed as a moral issue, where the editors’ decency was making them try to censor Alex’s horrible content, but I think the reality is a little different.
Alex’s YouTube channel had just gotten this copyright strike for broadcasting a picture of Pozner’s son, and this episode was supposed to be his defiant response. Not only does Alex publish Pozner’s mailing address on this episode, he also airs the picture of Pozner’s son many times, promoting the easily debunked conspiracy that he “died again” in Pakistan.
In essence, Alex was putting on a performance of daring YouTube to take down their account. He’d been warned not to do something, and then was making a big deal about how he was so brave that he was going to do it anyway. What he didn’t tell the audience is that he was cheating, and the offending content wasn’t going to be published on the platform that wouldn’t allow it.
These are instances that you may be inclined to see as evidence that there is a moral center somewhere at Infowars, that some of the people working there know that what Alex does on air is often ethically past the line. But a more cynical, and possibly more accurate, reading is that there are people in the company who are smart enough to recognize when something Alex does can produce real consequences.
In all likelihood, that email from CJ wasn’t prompted by him being offended that Alex mocked a grieving father; it was rooted in an awareness that this could be defamatory, and even if not, it was the kind of behavior that would make Infowars look really bad.
In all likelihood, that show log saying not to put the Feb. 12, 2015 episode on YouTube didn’t reflect anyone at Infowars being offended that Alex continued to maliciously use the image of Pozner’s son, or that Alex would publish Pozner’s mailing address. They just knew that if they posted it to YouTube, they’d get another strike on their account.
There is an awareness that what Alex did in these cases was bad, but you would be naive to assume this consisted of feeling that what Alex did was bad ethically. What he did was bad for the business, and these editors were just engaging in a little censorship to help Alex try to avoid the consequences of his actions.
I do declare, I think this "Infowars" organization may not be quite on the level!
It never ceases to amaze me how a certain type of person can see the guardrails, see the warning signs, and assume they're immune from consequences.
And cross posted from the podcast - Jordan is right, this is the kind of email we want to get!