Mitchell Sunderland Fired From Vice After BuzzFeed's Bombshell Report
Following an explosive BuzzFeed report about the far-right news site Breitbart and its relationships with racist and sexist hate movements, Mitchell Sunderland ― a senior writer at Vice’s feminism vertical, Broadly ― has been let go, the company said Friday.
The BuzzFeed report, “Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream,” describes how Sunderland on multiple occasions suggested story ideas to Milo Yiannopoulos, then a writer at Breitbart. At one point last year, Sunderland sent Yiannopoulos a link to an article by the author Lindy West and told him, “Please mock this fat feminist.”
.@mitchsunderland's ENTIRE JOB is performing feminism publicly. Privately, he encouraged Milo to target "fat feminist" Lindy West. pic.twitter.com/pPCixl1329
— Sejal Singh (@Sej_Singh) October 6, 2017
Vice said on Friday it had fired Sunderland. Previously, a company spokesperson had told BuzzFeed that Vice was “shocked and disappointed” by Sunderland’s “highly inappropriate and unprofessional conduct.”
VICE tells BuzzFeed company has fired @mitchsunderland after emails to MILO were made public in @Bernstein report https://t.co/qGd4a6Gkmw pic.twitter.com/fv7Cl1W8a8
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 6, 2017
In the BuzzFeed report, writer Joseph Bernstein identifies several members of the media who were on an email chain with Yiannopoulos, where they collectively mocked stories about social justice and pitched story ideas.
Bernstein writes:
In addition to tech and entertainment, Yiannopoulos had hidden helpers in the liberal media against which he and Bannon fought so uncompromisingly. A long-running email group devoted to mocking stories about the social justice internet included, predictably, Yiannopoulos’s friend Ann Coulter, but also Mitchell Sunderland, a senior staff writer at Broadly, Vice’s women’s channel. According to its “About” page, Broadly “is devoted to representing the multiplicity of women’s experiences. … we provide a sustained focus on the issues that matter most to women.”
“Please mock this fat feminist,” Sunderland wrote to Yiannopoulos in May 2016, along with a link to an article by the New York Times columnist Lindy West, who frequently writes about fat acceptance. And while Sunderland was Broadly’s managing editor, he sent a Broadly video about the Satanic Temple and abortion rights to Tim Gionet with instructions to “do whatever with this on Breitbart. It’s insane.” The next day, Breitbart published an article titled “‘Satanic Temple’ Joins Planned Parenthood in Pro-Abortion Crusade.”
Many on Twitter called for Sunderland to be fired, saying that for him to work as a staff writer at a site focused on women was “wrong.”
Men like @mitchsunderland being able to get jobs writing on behalf of women is a lot of what's wrong with media. https://t.co/1aUUNCMgin
— Gennette Cordova (@GNCordova) October 5, 2017
That senior editor at @broadly is @mitchsunderland. He needs to be fired today. https://t.co/kRHXd6nfX6
— Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) October 5, 2017
I don’t mean to be petty but I’m totally here for the “Mitchell Sunderland is over” party.
— M. Mayhem (@MsMaggieMayhem) October 5, 2017
Sunderland did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. He has been quiet on Twitter since the BuzzFeed article began circulating.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.