Bannon podcast top spreader of misinformation, researchers say

Former Trump White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon’s “War Room” podcast has been the top spreader of misinformation in the conservative media ecosystem, according to a new study.

Bannon’s “War Room” shared the most unsubstantiated or false claims in the dataset included in a study published by the Brookings Institution this week.

Close to 20 percent of all episodes of Bannon’s show that were assessed featured claims that Snopes and PolitiFact fact-checkers or the terms dictionary flagged as unsubstantiated or false, the study found.

In citing the unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud that helped ignite the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the study noted Bannon’s show before and after the incident “offers a chilling example of the types of unsubstantiated and false claims spread by prominent political podcasters after the 2020 election.”

Bannon devoted more than 130 episodes to promoting election fraud narratives, the researchers found, and accounted for nearly three-quarters of all conspiracy-related content on political podcasts about the coronavirus pandemic, masks and vaccines.

Bannon, a former top editor at Breitbart, continues to host a number of far-right lawmakers and media figures on his show.