VICE Suppressing Stories About Bernie Sanders?
A Vice insider claims the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff used her role as Vice’s COO to suppress stories about Bernie Sanders.
Who is Alyssa Mastromonaco and Why Should You Care?
Alyssa left her role as ‘White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations’ in March of 2015. Eight months later, she became the Chief Operating Officer at Vice Media.
Vice is known for being sensationalist and lacking journalistic credibility. Former Vice News Editor in Chief, Jason Mojica, in a 2013 interview with Bedford + Bowery, said he entered journalism reluctantly and that he was “more interested in politics and using communications and media to manipulate politics.”
Bernie Sanders was making an unexpected rise in the 2015 primaries while Alyssa was between jobs. A Vice insider, familiar with upper management, told me that Alyssa was suppressing stories about Bernie Sanders.
Interviews with Biden and Obama along with an exclusive of Obama visiting a jail can be attributed to the access obtained by hiring Alyssa.
Obama Bro
Alyssa’s prior White House role tends be misrepresented as some kind of glorified secretary but her role was much more politically significant. She described her closeness to Obama as ‘brotherly’. For 10 years, she was part of a team that planned Obama’s day-to-day, and vetted potential hires. To this day, she remains an outside advisor and is helping plan his post-presidency.
From Chaos to True Chaos
When Alyssa was hired at Vice, employees (the ones paying attention at least) saw her as Shane buying access to the white house. “She is an example of vice celebrity management,” a Vice insider told me over encrypted messenger “whereby they will hire people for the showmanship of it, give them a position for which they are unqualified with the secret intention of getting access to obama, and then the employees suffer thru management of someone who doesn’t how to work with young people or manage a young media upstart and then is quietly spit out when the democrats lose.” In hindsight, she was ‘the last ticket to the Titanic’.
The suppression was probably more inadvertent than malicious. After reading Alyssa’s recent memoir, I told my contact that I doubted their claim — Alyssa attributes an internship with Bernie as changing her views on politics to a positive one. My contact elaborated saying, “In her mind she was bringing order to outreach chaos at vice”. In other words, Alyssa was trying to formalise communication methods between Vice and Washington and that, malicious or not, resulted in structure at Vice that suppressed stories.
Alyssa was also sending emails that didn’t gel with staff. In an attempt to change ‘ciggie smoking’ habits, Alyssa emailed the office threatening to take away breakfast for everyone — including the non-smokers. When employees adapted by smoking across the street, near a nursery she wrote “Breakfast is cancelled tomorrow” in a company wide email in red bold lettering. “p/s you know how I feel about my jelly donuts and I fear this hurts me more than it hurts you.”
These emails appear to closely align with the growing anxiety of her new job. In her words, she went from a place that was “seemingly chaotic” to Vice which was “truly chaotic” and “ended up on Zoloft” — an anti-anxiety medication.
Alyssa was reached for comment “Having been at exec at VICE, I am not going to participate.”
Buying Credibility
Only so much blame can be placed on Alyssa. The hire was made by CEO Shane Smith.
The first part of the plan worked. One month after Alyssa starting work, Joe Biden visited Brooklyn HQ.
Not everyone at Vice was enthusiastic.
Some employees at Vice saw this as a step away from legitimacy. One employee, when asked about the visit asked (I’m paraphrasing a bit), ‘imagine if Joe Biden showed up the office of the Washington Post to give a pep talk?’ emphasising ‘the 4th estate is meant to be a check on power and government, not making deals with them.’
How much did Vice pay Alyssa? Her book doesn’t say but writes that she was offered less than what she asked for. At the time, she said her “confidence was simmering on low” and accepted the lower amount.
Payscale says entry level COOs typically earn about 100–125k USD with a premium of 33% for being in New York. But since Vice is a larger company, my guess is that her pay would be closer to overall average of 200k listed on Glassdoor.
Timeline of Vice’s Access to the White House
- Day 0 Alyssa Mastromonaco is hired as top executive at Vice (Nov 17, 2014)
- Day 49 Alyssa’s first day of work (January 5, 2015)
- Day 80 Vice President Joe Biden visits Vice HQ (February 4, 2015)
- Day 120 Obama is interviewed by Shane Smith (March 9, 2015)
- Day 224 Obama & Biden re-broadcast in ‘Cold War 2.0’ Vice on HBO (June 29, 2015)
- Day 320 Obama and Shane Smith visit a US prison (Sep 20, 2015)
- Day 511 Sanders and Clinton polls narrow to 5 points (April 11, 2015)
- Day 562 Obama officially endorses Clinton (June 9, 2016)
- Day 612 Murdoch, early Vice investor, urges Fox News’ Roger Ailes to support Clinton (July 21, 2016)
- Day 723 Trump wins election (Nov 9, 2016)
- Day 751 Obama speaks with Shane after election (Dec 6, 2016)
- Day 829 (30 days after Trump inauguration) Alyssa is moved to A&E
Disclosure
I’m a liberal Canadian. My vote for US president would have been:
- Bernie
- Hillary
- Eat the ballot
- Trump
#MeToo Advisory
After a damning article by The Daily Beast and an investigation by the New York Times looming: Vice announced a female-led advisory board meant to change things at the company. Alyssa Mastomonaco became a member of the committee.
After meteoric NYTimes story was published, employees went to Twitter to express their frustration. Some of that frustration was aimed at Nancy Ashbrooke and Alyssa. As the NYTimes pointed out: “Ms. Ashbrooke worked as vice president of human resources at Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax Films from 1991 to 2000.”
These tweets were curated by the writer and designer, Robyn Kanner — anonymity required because of Vice’s draconian non-disclosure agreements. One part of the Twitter thread read “Nancy and Alyssa degraded and gossiped about female employees to others in the office. After every interaction I had with those two women, I felt alone, helpless, and cried in the bathroom.” Another tweet shared a resignation letter by Vice’s travel coordinator which read “Nancy and Alyssa showed me zero respect.” The letter alleges, after their meeting full of grand promises, several people overheard Alyssa complaining about the employee. “[Nancy and Alyssa] squash complaints and pretend everything is fine — this is a dangerous game.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANIEL VOSHART works in architecture and VR and has been a gadfly of Vice Media since 2015. If you work for Vice and wish you didn’t: send me a DM on Twitter.
ABOUT NOT VICE
not vice is the bastard child of an unfinished book about Vice Media. Maybe it will be a book, maybe it won’t. For updates on the best and worst of vice: do the Twitter thing or 👆 subscribe on Medium.
