''Crooks and Liars'' is a
progressive
Progressive may refer to:
Politics
* Progressivism, a political philosophy in support of social reform
** Progressivism in the United States, the political philosophy in the American context
* Progressive realism, an American foreign policy par ...
news blog focusing on political events founded by John Amato.
History
Crooks and Liars, a self-described liberal political blog, was started by John Amato in September 2004.
Amato, known as the "Vlogfather," was a pioneer of video blogging, which he turned to after an injury undermined his saxophone career during a hiatus from a reunion tour with Duran Duran. Amato said he started the site "because he thought that mainstream media wasn't critical enough of the Bush Administration, and he felt motivated to speak out".
In 2002, the site's coverage of CNN catching a falsehood in Fox News' coverage of Bill O'Reilly was highlighted by
The Hill
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in ...
, as was its writeup about six potential President Barack Obama Supreme Court justice nominees, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's attacks on Obama, critiques of Obama "appeasing" House Republicans, criticism of President Obama's surrogates, the 2009 Republican Party leader's focus on supporting gay marriage and the site's 2009 donation drive.
In 2021, Crooks and Liars helped expose President Donald Trump's supporters' efforts to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election. According to
The New Yorker, the site "dug up tax filings" that exposed connections between nonprofits and a chairman of the
Federalist Society who opposed efforts to make it easier to vote.
Influence, recognition, and content
Crooks and Liars received the ''"Best Video Blog"'' award at the Weblog Awards in 2006, and a ''"Best Weblog About Politics"'' at the 2008 Weblog Awards. ''
Time'' magazine listed Crooks and Liars as one of the 25 Best Blogs of 2009. In 2010, Crooks and Liars' content was featured by
New York (magazine)
''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker'', ...
's Intelligencer. A 2011 study in
''Journalism'' included Crooks and Liars in a list of the "12 most popular partisan blogs."
A 2017 study by Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center found that Crooks and Liars was among the 50 websites whose content was most frequently shared on
Twitter by supporters of
Hillary Clinton in the
United States presidential election, 2016.
In 2016,
Indiana University Kokomo professor Paul Cook includes Crooks and Liars among a list of sites with a "tendency to rely on clickbait headlines". The same year, Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of media at
Merrimack College, identified Crooks and Liars as one of several news websites with "a baiting or heavily biased tone". A 2019 study identified Crooks and Liars as a "biased source".
The
Oxford Internet Institute
The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) is a multi-disciplinary department of social and computer science dedicated to the study of information, communication, and technology, and is part of the Social Sciences Division of the University of Oxford ...
identifies Crooks and Liars as a "junk news" source.
A 2019 study published in the ''
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' found that self-identified Democrats trusted
Fox News more than Crooks and Liars. The same study classified Crooks and Liars as a hyperpartisan source.
, writing in ''
The New Yorker'', described Crooks and Liars as a "progressive investigative reporting site."
References
{{Reflist
External links
Crooks and Liars website
American political blogs
Internet properties established in 2004