Hot Air: The Journalistic Integrity of a Hired PR Consultant.
I used to be a registered Republican, and a partisan one at that. Hot Air became one of the websites in my daily routine because they covered a wide spectrum of politics, and from my partisan view they had a “balanced” coverage of the political spectrum with a lean to the right. Since the great RINO hunt that started in 2005, (and that continues to this day,) the site has changed - becoming a subsidiary of the overtly right wing and religious Salem Communications, and aligning with the far right wing of the party, and eventually the tea party.
Being a far left or right polarized media site becomes a business model unto itself with daily whipping of bile and flacking of outrage as the main business process. I quit reading the site long ago because what they would write about any given issue was so predictable that I didn’t need to. However they still have my email address from my registration way back when I did so to comment at the site, and it appears that they are now using those for either monetary or political gain.
Today I received an email begging money for the Republican party in general. That’s as partisan as you can get, and they might as well be paid political consultants instead of journalists as they pretend to be. I can hear the rightward side going ‘Buh buh but .. .Daily Kos Does it!’ and they are right that DKOS promotes candidates and issues - but DKOS doesn’t pimp for the Democrat party in general to my knowledge. They promote candidates and issues that align with their political philosophy, and I’ve never received an email from DKOS even though I’ve been registered there as long as I have at Hot Air.
So did Hot Air sell their email list and logo, or are they just fanatically shilling and flacking for their home team? It’s just another right wing site that might as well be an appendage of the party.
Here’s a PNG of the email: