Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay Recycles Four-Month-Old BLP Story, Calls it ‘Exclusive’

Tuesday evening, Lachlan Markay of leftwing rag The Daily Beast published an “exclusive” story on U.S. Senate candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith that Big League Politics covered months ago.

“EXCLUSIVE: Former Facebook prez and Napster founder Sean Parker bankrolled the super PAC of race-baiting Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith,” said Daily Beast editor-in-chief Noah Schachtman on Twitter, linking to the story.

The story was branded as “exclusive” on the site, too.

As Big League Politics reported way back on July 14 (and several times after that):

An old name in Silicon Valley circles and Democrat politics has become a driving force for the election of a recently-appointed Republican U.S. Senator from Mississippi.

Sean Parker, billionaire founder of Napster, the online file sharing service, and early investor in Facebook, has donated $250,000 to the Victory Fund PAC, aimed at getting Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) elected, according to Pro Publica.

Parker was a large Hillary Clinton donor, too. According to the New York Times, he “gave nearly $300,000 to a joint fund-raising committee for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and dozens of state Democratic parties.”

The substance of Daily Beast’s article was the same as BLP’s. The creative geniuses there even used the exact same thumbnail photo.

But Markay did leave out a few important facts.

He did not mention that Hyde-Smith was a registered Democrat until 2011 when she changed parties to run for statewide office. Given his proclivity for partisan hackery, that omission was likely purposeful. He also left out the fact that Hyde-Smith voted in the 2008 Democratic primary, meaning that she either cast a vote for twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary R. Clinton, successful presidential candidate but disastrous president Barack H. Obama, or all-around scumbag Jon Edwards. Hyde-Smith is hardly a GOP hardliner. That information has been reported at length on this site – and for quite some time now.

Further, campaign finance records are public information, making it a serious stretch for Daily Beast to call this story “exclusive.” It is “exclusive” inasmuch as the entire internet-using world could garner the information in Markay’s article with a simple  Google search, and of course that BLP reported it four months ago.

Markay, who often calls BLP a conspiracy site, apparently has no problem ripping of our work. In cowardly fashion, he did not respond to a comment request for this story.

Apparently, this is the type of work for which one needs a journalism degree. Quick, someone get that man a Pulitzer!