Crooks and Liars
American progressive political blog
Crooks and Liars is an anti-fake-news, progressive political news blog founded by John Amato. The website has been described as hyperpartisan.
History
Crooks and Liars, a self-described liberal political blog, was started by John Amato in September 2004. Amato, known as the "Vlogfather," was a pioneer of video blogging, which he turned to after an injury undermined his saxophone career during a hiatus from a reunion tour with Duran Duran. Amato said he started the site "because he thought that mainstream media wasn't critical enough of the Bush Administration, and he felt motivated to speak out".
In 2009, the site's coverage of CNN catching a falsehood in Fox News' coverage of Bill O'Reilly was highlighted by The Hill, as was its writeup about six potential President Barack Obama Supreme Court justice nominees, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's attacks on Obama, critiques of Obama "appeasing" House Republicans, criticism of President Obama's surrogates, the 2009 Republican Party leader's focus on supporting gay marriage and the site's 2009 donation drive.
In 2021, Crooks and Liars helped expose President Donald Trump's supporters' efforts to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election. According to The New Yorker, the site "dug up tax filings" that exposed connections between nonprofits and a chairman of the Federalist Society who opposed efforts to make it easier to vote.
Influence, recognition, and content
Crooks and Liars received the "Best Video Blog" award at the Weblog Awards in 2006, and a "Best Weblog About Politics" at the 2008 Weblog Awards. Time magazine listed Crooks and Liars as one of the 25 Best Blogs of 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crooks and Liars” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.