More news out of conservative news site Breitbart: Breitbart editor-at-large Joel Pollak wrote, posted and unpublished an article criticizing editor Ben Shapiro. Shapiro resigned last night along with Michelle Fields, the reporter who has filed police report against Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
The article was headlined, “Ben Shapiro Betrays Loyal Breitbart Readers in Pursuit of Fox News Contributorship.”
In a statement on Breitbart’s website, Pollak confirmed he wrote the article, which he said was “an effort to make light of a significant company event.” Pollak said the article “was published as a result of a misunderstanding without going through the normal editorial channels” and apologized.
But, the byline on the article was “William Bigelow,” the name Shapiro’s father used when he wrote for Breitbart. Shapiro’s father, David Shapiro, used that pseudonym to protect against threats and online harassment, Politico reported. Like his son, he quit Breitbart last night.
“The fact they would use my father’s pseudonym in order to attack me just exposes how despicable they are,” Ben Shapiro told Politico. On Twitter, Shapiro doubted that Pollak actually wrote the article.
The now-unpublished article read in part:
“Former Breitbart News editor-at-large Ben Shapiro announced Sunday evening via left-wing Buzzfeed that he is abandoning Andrew Breitbart’s lifelong best friend, widow, hand-picked management team and friends in pursuit of an elusive contributorship at the Fox News Channel.”
The article accused Shapiro of having “apparently violated virtually every clause in his employment clause” and called him an “ambitious conservative gadfly, who is known to live on the edge, courting and then leaving a series of companies over the past several years.”
iMediaEthics has written to Pollak to ask how long the article was posted and about the use of Shapiro’s father’s pseudonym.