Journalists are expected to maintain a high level of ethical judgment, everybody knows the rules.
In the modern age, however, the media has become judge, jury, and prosecutor in the court of public opinion. There are no appeals. There are no retrials and the accused are often not allowed to present their evidence to the court.
Such is the case of Barstool Sports President Dave Portnoy after Business Insider released a raunchy tell-all sex scandal report that went as far as silently accusing the 44-year-old of being a rapist, sexual predator of young college-aged women.
Portnoy immediately refuted the allegations in that article, saying Business Insider is simply using the story to save itself by hiding it behind a paywall that requires a monthly subscription. Portnoy said that his relationship with two women who worked with Black for the article was completely consensual and he had the evidence to prove it.
Hint: You can easily read any store behind a paywall by hitting Ctrl-U in your web browser then copy-pasting that code into any HTML editor.
Portnoy has officially declared war on Business Insider, CEO Henry Blodget, and author Julia Black. Blodget, in 2002 was charged with civil securities fraud and was permanently banned from the securities industry. He was forced to pay the SEC $2 million in fines and a $2 million disgorgement.
This week, Blodget’s Wikipedia entry was updated, most likely by a stoolie, a fan of Barstool Sports, “Blodget is most famous for his ability to release an article with no facts in attempts to ruin Dave Portnoy’s life, however, he threw rocks out of a glass house given his criminal acts of stealing money from citizens, as a result, he looks like an absolute baffoon. Portnoy now points out the flaws in the article with only facts. Whilst business insider refuses to comment and most likely will suffer irreversible loss of credibility. Practically ruining the publication.”
The article portrayed Portnoy as a sex-crazed maniac, sharing some texts between Portnoy and the two women who gave their tell-all tales to Black and Business Insider.
In the summer of 2020, Madison sent Barstool Sports’ founder, Dave Portnoy, a direct message on Instagram complimenting his famous “one bite” pizza reviews.
“Sick pizza reviews,” she wrote. “Thanks fly bitch,” Portnoy responded to one woman, allegedly.
“She was a 20-year-old college student at the time, Portnoy a 43-year-old multimillionaire. The conversation soon moved to Snapchat and text, where it quickly turned to the topic of sex. He sent her graphic videos of other women he’d slept with, according to Madison, and in messages reviewed by Insider, he pressed her to tell him about her sexual fantasies,” Black wrote.
Black spent nearly eight months as a freelance journalist, calling women who had relationships with Portnoy to get them to tell her about his sex life…and it paid off. Black was immediately hired as a full-time employee once the Portnoy story broke.
On Thursday, Portnoy fired back, releasing numerous texts between himself and the two women identified in the Insider story. They were texts that were intentionally left out by Black, because they showed that the women were indeed fond of Portnoy, even bragging about their relationship with the media mogul to friends.
Another went as far as saying how she manipulates rich people to get what she wants.
While Black’s story never specifically calls Portnoy a pedophile, sexual predator and deviant, it paints that exact picture. The fact is, these women sought out Dave Portnoy and pressed him for a relationship. After, they celebrated and bragged about that relationship, according to texts shared by Portnoy.
One of Business Insider’s witnesses against Portnoy’s alleged sexual assault openly joked about using lies about sexual assault to get her way with people.
Black also had an ax to grind against Portnoy, dating back to at least 2019 in tweets found before the journalist completely wiped her Twitter account of thousands of messages.
Another one of Portnoy’s accusers made a video about how she was a master at manipulation and lying to people.
“It literally became second nature to me, manipulation is a skill that I mastered,” she said. “I can get anything to do anything that I wanted them to do.”
You can see Portnoy’s rebuttal video here: