The Post Millennial is a conservative Canadian online news magazine. Founded in 2017, it publishes national and local news and has a large amount of opinion content. It has been owned by Human Events Media Group, the parent company of the American conservative website Human Events, since 2022.
History
The Post Millennial was founded in 2017 by Matthew Azrieli and Ali Taghva. The site's Facebook presence expanded rapidly between June 2018 and May 2019, with page interactions growing from 36,000 to 194,000 per month. Meanwhile, a new office was sited in Montreal, and the organization planned for another expansion into Toronto in 2020. In May 2019, Jeff Ballingall, a former political campaigner for Ontario PremierDoug Ford, was hired as the company's Chief Marketing Officer.[1] A media study by Canada's National Observer found that 8 per cent of Conservative respondents read The Post Millennial.[2]
Ownership and revenue
In 2017, in announcing its hiring of Ballingall as executive, The Post Millennial said it was funded by "private investors".[1] According to Taghva, the site receives revenue through paid subscriptions and advertisements; the site has not revealed the number of subscribers.[1]
In May 2022, the Human Events Media Group announced that it had acquired The Post Millennial.[3][4] The Human Events Media Group also owns Human Events, an American conservative publication founded in 1944 that went online-only in 2013.[3][4]
The Post Millennial provides both national and regional news. It runs stories on politics and culture. Its opinion section is a significant portion of its content, and conservative figures such as Barbara Kay have written opinions for the outlet. According to a CBC report published in 2019, much of the news content provided by The Post Millennial is reused from other media outlets with no additional reporting.[1]
The website Bellingcat described an article The Post Millennial published during the 2019 Australia fires as disinformation. Conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson released a false story alleging that the wildfires resulted in large part from arson. The Post Millennial used Watson's story as a basis for their own reporting, alleging that "legal action" had been taken against 183 people during the bushfires. Bellingcat argued that their presentation "did not botch the basic facts" but was misleading.[5]
In July 2020, after Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster was fatally shot in Austin, Texas, The Post Millenial falsely claimed that Foster had fired shots at a civilian vehicle. In fact, Foster had not fired any shots before he was slain. The Post Millennial later issued a correction, but continued to blame Foster for the death; The Daily Dot described the episode as an example of how "disinformation circulated by fringe groups to support their preferred narrative—that Black Lives Matter protesters are violent and lawless—works its way into the conservative media ecosystem and up to the White House."[6] An analysis by Politico and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue on media in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election in the United States found that the most prominent figures claiming violence by Black Lives Matter and claiming fraudulent ballots, James O'Keefe and Turning Point USA, were posted by The Post Millennial.[7]
In July 2020, The Daily Beast exposed an online network pushing United Arab Emirates propaganda against Qatar, Turkey, and Iran using op-eds placed in news outlets using fictitious authors. The Post Millennial published one of these articles under the fake persona "Joseph Labba". In response, The Post Millennial said that: "It appears we were caught up in an operation involving false identities that involved 46 other outlets including The Washington Examiner and The Hill Times ... The submission was evaluated by a member of our editorial team and deemed to be a meritorious submission... [and] a well-written, well-reasoned opinion piece about an important issue.... We stand by the decision to run it and we will be putting the piece back up shortly under The Post Millennial's byline."[8][9][10]
Many articles published by the website use aggregated content from other new sources, social media sites, and press releases with "inflammatory headlines"; the latter has been described as rage bait— for far-right accounts and pages on social media websites.[11]
In 2021, The Post Millennial played a key role in creating a viral narrative falsely claiming that some members of the U.S. women's national soccer team had disrespected a 98-year-old World War II veteran when he played the "Star-Spangled Banner" prior to a game.[12][13] The claim was false (the players in fact turned towards a U.S. flag while he played), but the story nevertheless went viral in right-wing media).[13][14] After the story had been corrected by other media outlets, The Post Millennial changed its story to include a quote from player Carli Lloyd: "We turned because we faced the flag."[15]
In August 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, The Post Millennial ran a story implying that unvaccinated high school students in the Eatonville, Washington public school system were forced to wear ankle monitors; in fact, the devices were proximity monitors that do not track location, were worn by both vaccinated and unvaccinated students (as well as staff), and were required only while participating in high and moderate contact indoor sports.[16][17][18] The devices were similar to those in use by the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball.[19] After being contacted, The Post Millennial updated their headline[16][17] but added no correction.[20]
Staff
Andy Ngo has been editor-at-large since 2019. Ngo was previously with Quillette.[21] Several advertisers such as Logitech pulled ads from the site due to its association with Ngo.[22]
Yaakov Pollak, a former provincial Conservative Party candidate, joined the media group in July 2019. Pollak ran a variety of Conservative Party-affiliated Facebook pages, including "Liberty Now" and "Elect Conservatives" pages. Pollak did not declare his connection to these pages; until he was contacted by interested media groups, the majority of content on those pages was sourced from The Post Millennial.[23]
The Post Millennial employed Cosmin Dzsurdzsa as among its first hires from late 2018; he wrote over 500 articles for the site. In August 2019, after the National Observer asked The Post Millennial about Dzsurdzsa's previous articles published in Russia Insider and his work for Free Bird Media, sites known for pro-Kremlin propaganda and white supremacist commentary, respectively, the publication parted ways with Dzsurdzsa.[24][11] The Post Millennial has also employed Anna Slatz, who published an investigation into Zoe Quinn's relationship with and allegations against Alec Holowka.[25]
