From the Beast’s media desk

Welcome to this week’s edition of Confider, the media newsletter that pulls back the curtain to reveal what’s really going on inside the world’s most powerful navel-gazing industry. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.

EXCLUSIVE — MESSENGER MESS: Amid the looming threat of layoffs and financial woes, The Messenger’s founder Jimmy Finkelstein wrote to his embattled newsroom late last week with some holiday cheer. “The Messenger has only been in business for six months and I am tremendously proud of what has been accomplished,” he wrote in the memo obtained by Confider. “This year’s achievements wouldn’t have been possible without your hard work and dedication.” The media tycoon touted that the site had grown at a “remarkable” pace, citing Google Analytics to claim the publication had 63.8 million page views in October, a 34 percent leap over the previous month. And then, he claimed, “We continued to grow in November and exceeded 77 million page views. The core of this growth is our ability to produce intelligent, vital and timely journalism.” But multiple newsroom insiders who spoke with Confider insisted there’s a reason Finkelstein specifically quoted Google Analytics and avoided Comscore, the industry standard, altogether: The Comscore traffic numbers were actually “horrific,” as one source put it. A rep for The Messenger wrote to Confider: “Our Comscore numbers aren’t live yet due to technical issues outside our control. Given that Comscore doesn’t know our numbers yet, it would be impossible for you or anyone else to know what they are. We look forward to seeing our numbers correctly reported soon.” 

Elsewhere in the fledgling outlet’s newsroom, a homepage editor was fired earlier this month, Confider has learned, after she wrote in a group Slack channel that she felt she was being “asked to lie” when management told her to place an e-commerce post about Cyber Monday into a prominent slot of the site’s “Popular” section typically denoting articles that have been widely read or shared. “[H]ow do you know it’ll be the 3rd most popular story through Sunday?” that baffled homepage editor, Lisa Letostak, asked a colleague. “[J]ournalists shouldn’t publish lie, they shouldn’t be asked to lie by their employer, & having this conversation repeatedly is risking all our careers & our personal & professional reputations & it’s stressing me out,” she continued in the Slack channel. “Ms. Letostak was fired for ongoing performance issues,” a rep for The Messenger said. “The Cyber Monday commerce promotion was placed as an advertisement and clearly labeled. It specifically says that it is not produced by The Messenger’s editorial department,” the rep continued. A cached version of the homepage touting that article, however, does not appear to openly disclose the e-commerce nature of the story—until readers click into it. Letostak declined to comment.

EXCLUSIVE — FOX’S DÉJÀ VU: A ghost of Fox News’ past has come back to try and haunt the conservative cable giant. Andrea Tantaros has revived her longstanding, twice-dismissed claims against the network, filing a new case alleging she was subjected to sexual misconduct from multiple execs and on-air stars, forcible touching and groping, gender and sex discrimination, and gross and purposeful negligence. Additionally, she asserts that Fox News tampered with and illegally accessed her computer—part of alleged retaliation against her for complaints about harassment by late Fox News founder Roger Ailes—and that she was wrongfully terminated for speaking up. 

Adding to the bizarreness of the situation, Tantaros is representing herself in court. Just before the Nov. 23 deadline for the New York Survivors Act, she filed a summons, which was delivered to Fox News and Fox Corp on Dec. 4 and gives her more time to file a full complaint. As in her two previous lawsuits, Tantaros, a former rising star who co-hosted shows like The Five and Outnumbered, claims she was harassed or groped by Ailes, recently fired Fox exec John Finley, one-time GOP Sen. Scott Brown, and actor-slash-pundit Dean Cain. This time around, she added former correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera to her list of victimizers. Brown and Cain have previously denied her past groping claims, while Rivera texted Confider in response to these new charges: “Bullshit.” 

This latest legal action from Tantaros comes after her last two lawsuits against Fox were dismissed—and after a lengthy period in which she all but disappeared from the public eye. The former star pundit was abruptly sidelined by the network in April 2016. Fox claimed it was due to her not getting company approval for her anti-feminist book, while Tantaros alleged she was yanked off the air after complaining about harassment from Ailes. That lawsuit, in which she wrote that Fox “operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult,” was dismissed in 2017 after a judge ruled that the claims were covered by her Fox contract’s arbitration clause. She eventually upped the ante, filing another lawsuit in federal court, this time claiming Fox hacked her electronic devices so that Ailes, who was fired by Fox in 2016 amid a sex-misconduct scandal, could secretly record her and other female employees disrobing. During the course of that suit, her first lawyer Judd Burstein was replaced by attorneys from Morgan Lewis, who would later ditch her. After Tantaros operated pro se and represented herself, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in May 2018, declaring the case to be “based primarily on speculation and conjecture” and she’d “fail[ed] to adequately make out the basic elements of her claims.” 

Once a highly vocal presence on TV and social media, Tantaros has largely gone silent over the past five-plus years, save for some recent tweets about the Israel-Hamas war and some in-court beefing with right-wing edgelord Michael Malice, her book’s ghostwriter, over claims she failed to pay him. Tantaros’ resurrected claims against her former employer follow a bevy of recent lawsuits from other ex-employees accusing the channel of wrongful termination, retaliation, and condoning a hostile work environment. Tantaros has not responded to repeated requests for comment. Meanwhile, Fox has yet to respond to her summons and the network did not respond to a request for comment.

EXCLUSIVE — YASHAR GETS DUMPED: Twitter personality and journalist Yashar Ali, who is suing Los Angeles magazine for defamation over an extremely embarrassing 2021 profile, is being dropped by his high-profile attorney. Bryan Freedman, the bigwig lawyer currently repping fired TV stars Don Lemon and Tucker Carlson, filed a notice of motion to be relieved as Ali’s counsel earlier this month, according to documents obtained and reviewed by Confider. In a Dec. 4 motion filed with the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Freedman claimed there’d “been an irreconcilable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship” with Ali. Freedman further alleged that Ali “refuses to communicate” with his attorneys, making it impossible to “effectively represent” the social-media influencer with nearly a million followers between his Twitter and IG accounts. “Ali has not signed a substitution of attorney resulting in the need for the filing of this Motion,” Freedman made sure to point out in his declaration. 

A year after LA mag published a lengthy piece portraying Ali as a debt-ridden, couch-surfing “grifter” sponging off wealthy celebs, he sued the outlet and alleged that he wasn’t given a fair opportunity to respond to the accusations. He also took issue with the article’s claim he’d become suicidal during the fact-checking process, saying it “falsely implies that [Ali] acknowledged the truth of the supposed revelations in the article and was distraught that the public was going to learn the supposed truth about him.” The magazine’s then-editor Maer Roshan, however, responded that the “article was rigorously fact-checked and legally vetted, and by prior agreement with Yashar, every quote of his that appeared in the story was approved by him.” The case itself is barely on life support. An LA County judge granted two of the outlet’s three anti-SLAPP motions in January, and has since ordered Ali to pay nearly $40,000 of the magazine’s attorney’s fees. What’s left of Ali’s suit is scheduled to go to trial in late 2024. Earlier this year, a court ordered Ali to forfeit all of his future earnings to oil heiress Ariadne Getty, who lent Ali roughly $179,000, which he failed to pay back—a dispute detailed in the LA mag article. In recent months, Ali has re-embraced his role as one of the most prominent news figures in social media, especially after he tweeted a compilation of TikTok users sharing Osama Bin Laden’s “Letter to America”—prompting attention to the document to explode far beyond its actual virality. Ali declined to comment. Freedman did not respond to a request for comment.

Tips? We’re all ears: confider@thedailybeast.com or call/text us 551 655 2343.

EXCLUSIVE — WHAT THE PUCK: Puck’s “peerless” media reporter Dylan Byers’ obsession with former CNN honcho Chris Licht has not lessened even though Licht is long gone from the network. On Friday, under the cute headline “Licht of Arabia,” Byers reported that Licht attended the Saudi Future Investment Initiative, nicknamed “Davos in the Desert,” on his own dime and met with with the state-backed Saudi Research and Media Group (SRMG) regarding consulting work to launch an Al Jazeera rival. Confider has learned the same tip had been shopped to at least two other media outlets who did not end up writing about Licht’s Saudi adventure because, as it turns out, while Licht was an invited guest at the conference (his flights and hotel were paid for) he did not actually meet with SRMG or anyone connected to the media group. Byers reported that he tried to reach Licht “multiple times Friday for comment, but he did not respond,” but a source with direct knowledge of the situation said that Licht didn’t receive any calls, texts, or emails from the reporter. Licht and his rep declined to comment, as did Byers.

EXCLUSIVE — WAPO WALKOUT WALLOP: A daylong staff walkout at The Washington Post last Thursday might have hit a nerve with the paper’s readers. According to audience numbers provided to Post staffers on Friday, website and app page views were down 13 percent compared to recent Thursdays, while total site and app users were down 14 percent in the same comparison. Had readers made their way to the Post website, they would have been hard-pressed to find recognizable names. Many of the papers’ articles that day had a “Washington Post Staff” byline, with stories written either by reporters who’d asked for their names to be removed or by non-guild staffers. The work stoppage (which came nearly a year to the day after The New York Times union staged a similar daylong walkout) followed nearly a year and a half of prolonged contract negotiations between the paper’s union and management. The walkout also teed up a dramatic week at the paper, which set a Dec. 15 deadline for unionized staffers offered a buyout to accept their offers or risk involuntary layoffs. The guild declined to comment on the waning traffic, while the Post did not respond to a request for comment.

IN PLAIN SIGHT: The Ankler’s Janice Min interviewing former Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa at Zibby’s bookshop in Santa Monica where the author of What’s Left Unsaid: My Life at the Center of Power, Politics & Crisis said Joe Biden should consider dropping Kamala Harris from the 2024 ticket… The resurrected Jezebel has resumed posting stories from its new home at Paste, and former interim EIC Lauren Tousignant on Monday AM confirmed she’s been named the full-time EIC. “I’m really fucking excited,” she tweeted… a “high-level” New York Times staffer went full “in plain sight” on a Zoom call with colleagues last Thursday, per The Messenger, unwittingly flashing the entire chat before an editor removed her from the conference. A source reassured Confider “this was not a Jeffrey Toobin situation.”

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MORE FROM THE BEAST MEDIA DESK

—“I’m almost obsolete,” sad-sack nutjob Alex Jones told fellow gasbag Tucker Carlson last week in a lovefest interview between the pair. Jones used the chat to indirectly plead with Elon Musk to reinstate his Twitter account. Days later, Musk did just that—and personally welcomed the Sandy Hook truther back to the platform with an interview of his own. It never ends. More here.

—If GOP Rep. James Comer’s undying quest to prove Joe Biden committed an impeachable crime has been an abject failure, it’s not because Comer lacks any proof of anything but because of CNN host Jake Tapper and his “low-IQ” viewers. At least that’s what Comer insisted to Newsmax host Rob Finnerty, who chastised the lawmaker for letting Tapper make “your investigation sound like a joke” during a disastrous interview last week. Watch that here.

—The Fox News quest to find a Trump alternative is going swimmingly: After pivoting away from Ron DeSantis and dumping Glenn Youngkin, Fox News thought it found a new boy-king in Vivek Ramaswamy. But now “court jester” Vivek is dead to them, as last week’s debate reactions made clear. (Now it’s Nikki Haley’s turn to disappoint.) More on Vivek’s downfall here.

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—The former head of British spy agency MI6 is terrified about a potential Abu Dhabi-backed takeover of The Telegraph. The U.K. should say “no way” to any such deal, Sir Richard Dearlove told The Sunday Telegraph, because it’s “completely inappropriate” and a “profound security concern” for an autocratic state to own the papers. Former CNN boss Jeff Zucker is currently leading the UAE-financed bid for the outlets. More here.

—Between Tucker Carlson’s new venture, Ben Shapiro’s fledgling Daily Wire empire, Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV, and the success of Megyn Kelly’s transition into right-wing podcaster, Media Matters wonders: Is the Fox News diaspora about to make Fox News obsolete? “The business model of the Fox diaspora benefits from lower overhead, since its outlets don’t require the pretense of an expensive newsgathering apparatus,” writes Matt Gertz. “Instead, the former Fox stars can just rant angrily about whatever is reported elsewhere.” And oftentimes the target is Fox News itself. More here.

—Zombie Deadspin has fully overhauled a story accusing a 9-year-old Kansas City Chiefs fan of sporting blackface when it turned out the child is a member of the Chumash tribe and was wearing red paint on the other side of his face. “We regret any suggestion that we were attacking the fan,” the piece now reads. “To that end, our story was updated on Dec. 7 to remove any photos, tweets, links, or otherwise identifying information about the fan. We have also revised the headline to better reflect the substance of the story.” More here.

***WHAT ARE WE OUTRAGED ABOUT NOW?***

Michael Knowles, a failed actor who pivoted to a right-wing media career in raging against transgender people, is very concerned that PornHub is plotting to “convert” straight men by showing them content featuring gay and trans performers. As a host for Ben Shapiro’s rage-bait factory The Daily Wire, Knowles sounded the alarm last week over an undercover Project Veritas-style probe of PornHub’s parent company, in which a scriptwriter claimed that some of the company’s niche porn producers try to “push the envelope” by featuring trans men or women in “mainstream” scenes. “Test it out. See if you get a bigger audience with it, see if you can convert somebody,” the writer said in the sting video. While even the person behind the investigation pointed out that “convert” was meant in the digital-media business sense of “converting” free users into paid subscribers, Knowles insisted this was proof the porn industry is trying to somehow turn hetero men homosexual. “We are trying to convert straight guys into looking at gay porn or trans porn,” he said of the company. Knowles’ focus on this subject and assertions about how porn could change one’s sexuality and/or identity prompted widespread mockery, with many resurfacing his 2012 indie film appearance as a bisexual character. Considering how their business plan is to essentially offer a conservative alternative to “woke” products, is it just a matter of time before we see DailyWireHub?

Confider will return next week with more saucy scooplets. In the meantime, subscribe here  and send us questions, complaints, or tips here or call/text us 551 655 2343.