The Western Journal
U.S. far-right
Background
The Western Journal was founded in 2008–2009 by political consultant Floyd Brown under the name WesternJournalism.com as a project of the Western Center for Journalism. Brown had earlier founded Citizens United and was known for producing the 1988 Willie Horton attack ad against Michael Dukakis. In 2014, Liftable Media, Inc.—a company created by Floyd Brown's son Patrick—acquired the site along with other conservative properties such as Conservative Tribune and Liberty Alliance. The outlet rebranded as The Western Journal in 2017–2018, hired copy editors, and added a corrections page in an effort to improve credibility. Despite those changes, it relies almost entirely on aggregating and rewriting content from other outlets rather than original reporting. A 2019 New York Times investigation characterized it as producing 'sensationalized, misleading, or entirely made-up stories.' Because of poor ratings from fact-checkers and user-trust surveys, the site was blacklisted by Google and Apple News, and saw its Facebook traffic collapse around 2017. Independent bias raters—including Media Bias/Fact Check (far-right, mixed factual reporting), AllSides (right), and Ad Fontes Media (hyper-partisan right)—consistently place it at the rightmost end of the U.S. media spectrum. The outlet openly states on its About page that it advocates for conservative positions on issues such as abortion, national defense, and tax policy.
Sources
- The Western Journal – Wikipedia
- Western Journal – Bias and Credibility | Media Bias/Fact Check
- The Western Journal Media Bias Rating | AllSides
- Western Journal Bias and Reliability | Ad Fontes Media
- About The Western Journal
- Floyd Brown – Wikipedia
- From Willie Horton to Western Journalism: Floyd Brown's Career in Media Manipulation | Newsweek
- In the Trump Era, a Family's Fight With Disinformation (NYT investigation summary, MIT)
Profile compiled 2026-06-27; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.