Charles Johnson — labeled by media reports as a “conservative” writer — is described as a joke, toxic and derailed. Not by liberals but by others in Right-leaning media and the blogosphere.
Johnson, 26, made a name for himself over the summer for using aggressive, controversial methods to report on a hotly-contested Republican Senate primary race in Mississippi. He publicly offered to pay for information and also said he would publish a photo of one of the candidate’s wives, who is in a nursing home.
But Johnson also got the intriguing scoop on a campaign flyer put out by Sen. Thad Cochran, the incumbent of that race. It charged that Cochran’s opponent, Chris McDaniel, would “prevent blacks from voting.”
That story caught the attention of Kathleen McKinley, a conservative politics blogger for The Houston Chronicle in Texas.
“I started following him then,” she told the Washington Examiner. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow, he got this big story. It’s great.’ But it wasn’t long before I realized that he’s completely [nuts]. So I quit following him pretty quickly after that.”
In late June, back when Johnson threatened to publish the nursing home photo, he got into a Twitter fight with Alyssa Farah, a communications aide to Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.
“I hope this is a parody account,” Farah tweeted, linking to one of Johnson’s tweets.
Johnson called Farah, who once worked as a producer for conservative radio firebrand Laura Ingraham, a “bitch.” When Farah alerted her followers, Johnson followed up, tweeting that he was just being “descriptive.”
Johnson has created a mass of fans (he has nearly 18,000 followers on Twitter) writing for his no-frills website GotNews.com. There, he publishes blog posts related to the most controversial news stories of the day, like the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. He comes at them, though, with the deliberate goal of discrediting the victims and the media that sympathize with them.
A problem is that much of what Johnson writes is either not true, or, at the least, dubious. In 2013, for example, he wrongly reported that New Jersey Democrat Sen. Cory Booker doesn’t live in New Jersey. Three months later, he wrongly (and weirdly) reported that a New York Times journalist had a history of nude exhibitionism.
Most recently, Johnson posted the full name and a photo to his website of an individual who he claimed was “Jackie,” the subject of a much-disputed Rolling Stone article who claims she was gang-raped at the University of Virginia. (Rolling Stone subsequently said it should not have uncritically published her account of the horrific experience.)
In a separate post, Johnson added another photo he claimed was Jackie, later adding an odd correction that stated the photo may not actually be of the victim. Still, he left the photo up.
“I’ve never met or interacted with him, but he’s just spreading poison,” said the editor of one conservative media news website. “Whatever’s going on with his photo post is just further proof: ‘I screwed up, but I’m going to keep these unsubstantiated photos up, broadcasting the face of a woman who may or may not have been raped to the world.’”
Johnson also wrote posts accusing Jackie of being an activist and, arbitrarily, of being a Hillary Clinton supporter.
After publishing the supposed photos of Jackie, Johnson was profiled by the Washington Post. The piece, which labeled Johnson “a new breed of news hound: part troll, part provocateur, part bully for profit, and fully independent,” was widely criticized for appearing to glamorize him.
“If you want more bloggers threatening to expose the identities of an alleged rape victims, then you can thank the Washington Post for helping expedite that,” wrote Matt Lewis at the conservative Daily Caller website. “[The] profile of Charles Johnson is enough to fuel Johnson’s narcissism for years to come…”
Even staffers at the Post questioned the reasoning behind publishing the profile. “Profiling a mentally unstable person who harasses and stalks people for fun/attention seems counterproductive,” tweeted Post politics reporter Wesley Lowery. “Agreed,” replied Lynda Robinson, a Post editor.
Evan Gahr, a conservative journalist and former press critic for the New York Post, isn’t a fan of Johnson’s work, either.
“Johnson is a right-wing activist, not a journalist,” Gahr, who has his own reputation as a provocateur, told the Washington Examiner. “And a very sloppy activist considering all the facts he gets wrong. But in our parasitic blogger culture facts are irrelevant, only hits matter.”
Johnson’s methods come as many conservative news outlets struggle to gain and maintain credibility as sources for accurate information. The Post profile said his work “appear[s] conservative.” A blogger at the popular gossip blog Gawker said Johnson writes for “the online right-wing’s id.”
Johnson’s own Twitter bio says he will “tell the stories the mainstream media won’t,” a formulation frequently heard among conservative critics of that media.
Though conservative journalists are generally distrustful of mainstream news outlets, the attention on Johnson could be seen as a setback for conservative news media’s own attempt to be taken seriously.
“If the liberals at Salon or MSNBC were to create a caricature of a conservative reporter, it would be Charles Johnson,” remarked one reporter from The Daily Caller.
Lachlan Markay, an investigative journalist with the Washington Free Beacon, said Johnson represents what more mainstream and liberal outlets want to believe about conservatives. The blogger “conveniently confirms their worst preconceptions about conservatives,” Markay said.
Other conservative journalists and media types approached by the Washington Examiner, including several from TheBlaze and Breitbart News, declined to comment for this story, reasoning that it would give Johnson undeserved attention.
“I’m not wading into any stories on Chuck [Johnson],” said Tim Miller, a well-known Republican politics operative who regularly works with conservative journalists.
Even so, Johnson’s reputation has reach.
Kathleen McKinley, the conservative Houston Chronicle blogger, said she phoned her mother, who lives in Mississippi, during the Cochran-McDaniels primary and asked if she had heard about Johnson. Her mother had.
“Oh, no, he’s crazy,” McKinley recalled her mother saying.
Johnson did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
