The Curious Rise of Twitter Power Broker Yashar Ali
HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS, because this is a ride. What an interesting person. I feel like other journalists (artists?) have also been extremely talented and extremely inappropriate and extremely sad/moody, all in the tapestry that makes up a human.
The Curious Rise of Twitter Power Broker Yashar Ali by Peter Kiefer via LA Mag.
How Ali acquired so many powerful supporters is a bit of a mystery. Even his closest allies are a bit fuzzy about how they met. “I don’t remember how we became friends,” says New York Times Washington correspondent Maggie Haberman. Zucker has a hard time recalling, too. “That’s a really good question. How do I know Yashar?” So does CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “I couldn’t tell you how we met, but suddenly he was a presence in my life—a wonderful one,” he says. “It just feels like he’s always been in my life. But I don’t know that I’ve ever met him in person.”
According to Ruby Cramer, a writer for Politico who has been a close friend of Ali’s since 2012, “Yashar has a way of immediately becoming close to people, but not as a strategic tactic. You immediately become a part of his world and he becomes a part of yours. People have questions about Yashar because he doesn’t fit into your concept of what a reporter or a political operative looks like. There’s something mysterious about him that people have tried to diagnose—but those questions miss the point.”..
He’s just THERE, I GUESS 🙀
Taking stock of Ali’s journalistic accomplishments is tricky. Many of his major scoops have held up, including one—the news that Jared Kushner was a “significant person of interest” in the Russia investigation—that was served up simply as a tweet reply. And the range of topics on which he’s had an impact is impressive. In a recent profile of Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel in The New Yorker, Connie Bruck cited previous reporting by Ali. He chalks up his successes to a mix of hard work, hyper focus, and crack research skills that he sharpened as a political operative.
And yet, to many, there’s also something unsettling about his journalistic approach. In focusing on the overlapping worlds of media, politics, and the entertainment industry—where the stakes are extremely high and personal grudges abound—he relies heavily on anonymous sources, sometimes by the dozens.
OK, that’s juicy. I like it. I mean when the goods are there, that is his scoops have been huge and accurate, and isn’t that the point of ye ol journalism, holding truth to power??
In defending his friends—not to mention going after his enemies—Ali can be unflinching, even in the face of high-powered Hollywood publicists. While he was reporting the Osbourne story, he received a text from Howard Bragman, a well-known crisis PR agent who was representing the embattled talk-show host at the time. Bragman offered to explain Osbourne’s side of the story off-the-record, and to provide Ali with documents and emails that supported her version of events. “Try to control your enthusiasm,” he urged the reporter. “There are two sides to every story.” But Ali wasn’t interested. “I don’t do well with lectures or scolding, my friend,” he replied to Bragman. “I’m not some regular entertainment reporter. I’m Iranian and focus on investigations… I don’t need anything from anyone and throw cease-and-desist letters in the shredder… I am not scared of anyone and no one can do anything to me.” He added, somewhat surprisingly, that he has a “long-standing policy” against using off-the-record sources.
That righteous moxie propels a lot of Ali’s reporting. But it also makes many of his pieces highly reductive—most have clearly identifiable villains and victims and a crusading hero in the person of Ali himself. While no one can doubt he’s helped expose serious malfeasance, the public fallout that often results from his crusades has at times been hurtful and troublingly lacking in nuance. Once, when he was talking about the impact of his stories, I asked him if he ever felt any remorse about attacking people who once considered him a friend. “Never,” he said. “It doesn’t bring me down because I’ve been getting results. If I wasn’t getting results, it might. There’s no story I’ve ever done where it was a one-time mistake.”
He is unscrupulous, no doubt. Article describes some ummm too close relationships with a fkn Clinton donor and Kathy Griffin, each sending pretty wounded deer statements. Juicy of course, but sad.
No clever closing from me, just that I can’t stop thinking about the article, especially the “I don’t do well with lectures or scolding, my friend.” line - using that!
