The Rise of Breitbart News: History and Analysis

Breitbart, a once-fringe website whose highest-up figures have now launched themselves to the highest levels of government, often seems to have come out of nowhere for readers who restricted themselves to reading media sources that were previously considered the exclusive "mainstream."

Founded in 2008 by the eponymous Andrew Breitbart, the site became famous on the back of two issues: its support of the Tea Party, and its eventually-successful attacks on Congressmen Anthony Weiner. (This isn't entirely related, but it may be interesting to note that Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart writer who emerged as one of its most influential opinions faces, gained fame due to his role in the "GamerGate" scandal, when he brought publicity to accusations against writers in the video game industry regarding their supposed sexual escapades with staff of the companies whose products they reviewed. It's also interesting to make the connection to another conservative site, Drudge Report, which launched itself into the public sphere by breaking the first major story of the Lewinsky scandal -- at the same time accusing Newsweek of holding onto such sensitive information due to its sympathies towards the president.)

Breitbart changed hands in 2012 when Breitbart himself died, taking a new direction under the watch of Steve Bannon, now an adviser to President Trump. For years, the site found a small audience with a mix of opinions pieces and news articles, often blurring the line between the two. It found a larger audience during the 2016 political election, when it took that often partial approach and applied it to support, at first implicit then explicit, of Trump. In the months before the presidential election took place, Steve Bannon spoke quite overtly about the way in which his site is a platform for what he describes as the "alt-right" movement, positing it as a counter to news sources like the New York Times which he views as offering similarly partial views. Such a direct approach seems unusual in the long tradition of print journalism, in which impartiality has always been at least a superficial goal, though newspapers have often been held to represent the biased, personal views of their owners, such as multiple FDR-opposed isolationists who criticized his willingness to help Europeans in the lead-up to World War II. But similar approaches have found success in other mediums even when they were considered overt; Rush Limbaugh saw a great amount of success as a talk show host in the nineties, where he shocked radio listeners' expectations by proclaiming himself as an overtly conservative commentator and gained significant popularity that way.

Despite the credit that some give to Limbaugh for his success in bolstering conservative votes in his heyday, the power that has been bestowed upon Bannon has been far more significant, including his temporary, but now-revoked, position as National Security Adviser. Though Bannon himself has stepped down as executive chair of Breitbart, his influence can be seen in newfound, different treatments of journalists from similarly politically inclined sites such as Lucian Wintrich.

Sources
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-breitbart-news-steve-bannon
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/is-trump-trolling-the-white-house-press-corps