The “War Room” podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon spreads the most disinformation among conservative podcasts hosted by Apple, a recent study from the Brookings Institute found.
The study — which transcribed 36,603 podcast episodes from 79 political talk shows released before Jan. 22, 2022 — checked each episode’s transcript for keywords associated with common falsehoods debunked by fact checkers, The New York Times explained.
Researchers found that nearly 20 percent of Bannon’s episodes contained falsehoods, misleading statements, or unsubstantiated claims. The study also found that Conservative podcasters contained these things 11 times more often than liberal podcasters.
The other conservative podcasters found to contain the highest percentage of false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims included Sean Hannity, Rudy Giuliani, Charlie Kirk, Steven Crowder, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Daniel Horowitz, and co-hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
Bannon called the report’s findings a “badge of honor,” stating, “What they call disinformation or misinformation we consider the truth. And time is proving us out.”
The study also highlights the role that Big Tech companies like Apple, Google, Spotify, and others play in disseminating such disinformation and using algorithms that recommend these podcasts to audiences of millions. These companies’ policies banning misinformation and hate speech are “vague and poorly enforced, allowing false content to spread,” the Times reported.
Bannon co-founded the right-wing news site Breitbart and served as chief executive officer of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He also served as White House chief strategist and senior counselor to the president from January 2017 until August 18, 2017 when Trump fired him.
In January 2018, Bannon was quoted in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House as calling Trump “a crooked business guy” and a “scumbag.”
Afterward, Trump released a public statement, saying, “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” adding, “Steve had very little to do with our historic victory.” Trump later referred to Bannon as “Sloppy Steve” on Twitter and claimed that he “cried when he got fired and begged for his job.”
In August 2020, Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering connected to the We Build the Wall campaign, a $25 million GoFundMe crowdfunding that claimed to be raising funds to help Trump construct a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump had originally said that the Mexican government would entirely pay for such a wall.