Report: Democratic Donor Trying to 'Gut and Destroy' Pro-Gun Media

AP

A Democratic donor and one-time suggestion for an Obama cabinet position plans "gut and destroy" pro-gun media, according to a report in the Daily Caller.

An anonymous employee of Intermedia Partners, a private investment firm, told the Daily Caller that managing partner Leo Hindery Jr. is buying up top gun culture media with the intention of "stripping them down to virtual destruction." Intermedia Partners owns Intermedia Outdoor Holdings, which publishes 17 hunting and gaming magazines; owns the Sportsman Channel; and is in the process of obtaining the Outdoor Channel, pending federal approval:

Prior to its acquisition by InterMedia, the media brand Petersen’s Hunting, the television arm of which is broadcast by the Sportsman Channel, was housed in a “beautiful” facility in Baxter, Minnesota, overlooking the Mississippi River. The facility had approximately 60 employees, a massive studio, at least nine editing bays and fully-wired machine rooms and was conducting about four studio shoots per year with a full production crew.

That facility now mostly consists of about 12 employees — “basic administrative types,” who “think every day they go into work is going to be their layoff day,” according to an InterMedia employee who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hindery is a Huffington Post blogger once mentioned as a possible secretary of commerce in 2009. He has donated to numerous Democratic candidates, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, and to then-candidate Barack Obama in 2007, according to data posted on OpenSecrets.org.

From the Daily Caller:

InterMedia also purchased a company called Barrett Productions in Missoula, Mont., which was previously a thriving and well-respected television production company. The Barrett facility is now “gutted.”

“There’s nothing there but one intern slash production assistant and one administrative type. All the production people are gone. It’s a shell,” according to the employee.

“Now that Hindery has the Outdoor Channel, he’s in a position to consolidate all of the major pro-Second Amendment media titles in this country, strip them down, and destroy them, like venture capitalists do sometimes,” the employee said.

Read the full report here.