Ben Swann

Benjamin Swann (born July 17, 1978) is an American television news anchor, investigative journalist, and political commentator.

He became a TV sports producer, and later a news journalist and producer, and managing editor on network affiliates, FOX, and RT America of the Russian state-owned TV network RT.

Swann created a news segment called Reality Check in association with Fox 19 in Cincinnati and CBS46 in Atlanta, in which he covered "issues other media is not looking at" and uncritically presented alt-right conspiracy theories.

Swann was homeschooled with nine brothers and sisters in El Paso, Texas, and earned a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from Brigham Young University in 1993, at the age of 15, and a master's degree in history from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 1994, at the age of 16.

At the age of 15, Swann became a youth pastor at his local Baptist Church in Canutillo in El Paso County, Texas.

At the age of 19, he began preaching at revivals in Texas.

Unable to find a position as a pastor in El Paso, he followed a suggestion from one of his brothers to gain a job in TV news.

At that time, four of his brothers worked in television.

Three were news cameramen.

He worked for a period of time for KDBC-TV.

In 1998, he moved to KFOX-TV to work as a news cameraman.

After working in Portland, Oregon, as an assistant pastor, Swann returned to the Fox station KFOX in El Paso as a sports producer.

He then filmed, edited, and reported news and sports stories before becoming a morning co-anchor and managing editor at the station.

He won regional Emmy Awards in 2005 and 2009, as well as a national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2002 for coverage of Alexandra Flores.

During this period, Swann was an investigative journalist for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN News) covering the trade in illegal drugs at the southern border.

In 2008, he became an evening news anchor for the NBC affiliate KTSM-TV.

He left El Paso in December 2010 to become an evening TV news presenter at Cincinnati, Ohio's Fox affiliate WXIX-TV, co-anchoring with Tricia Macke.

He produced a thrice-weekly news segment series entitled Reality Check shortly after joining the station which he described as investigating "issues other media is not looking at".

The series reflected Swann's libertarian views and his advocacy of Ron Paul's positions.

One theme of Swann's Reality Check was Ron Paul's presidential campaign, with his goal of providing fairer coverage for Paul than the conservative or liberal national press, including an episode about the racist "Ron Paul newsletters" which contradicted the findings of The New Republic columnist James Kirchick who broke the story.

He garnered praise for a 2012 in-person interview with President Barack Obama about the so-called "kill list" which is used to direct drone strikes against American citizens, like Anwar al-Awlaki.

Swann reported on conspiracy theories about the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting, questioned the truth of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, presented 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the false claims of a cover-up by the CDC of data related to the MMR vaccine and autism.

He has also questioned the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Civil War, whether United States had a role in the development of the Islamic State, and other controversial topics.

In September 2012, one segment of Reality Check in particular went viral and received a great deal of media attention.

In it, Swann was able to obtain a 7-minute one-on-one interview with President Barack Obama while on an election campaign stop in Ohio - a rare opportunity for a local news reporter.

Swann asked the President direct questions about the so-called presidential "kill list" which had been used to direct drone strikes against terrorism suspects, and the legality of the list including U.S. citizens, like Anwar al-Awlaki and teenage son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.

Answering Swann's questions, Obama responded by saying news reports about the list have never been confirmed by him and that drone strikes in Yemen would help bring U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan home sooner.

Several journalism and civil liberties watchdogs praised Swann's fact-checking work on the segment, such as Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic, Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian, Byron Tau of Politico, The Huffington Post, and the Columbia Journalism Review.

Swann broke several details about local officials at the Cincinnati IRS office involved in the IRS targeting controversy which were picked up in national news media and led to Swann making brief appearances on Fox News.

On October 23, 2012, Swann served as a panel member on a third-party presidential candidates debate hosted by Larry King in Chicago, Illinois, and broadcast on C-SPAN, Al Jazeera America, and online through the sponsorship of the Free & Equal Elections Foundation.

After leaving WXIX-TV, Swann started a social media channel called "Truth in Media" to continue production of his show Reality Check.

Truth in Media was a collaboration with Republican Liberty Caucus and Joshua Cook.

His Reality Check, according to The Daily Beast, echoes talking points from media outlets such as RT and InfoWars.

Swann's Reality Check segments were uploaded to his YouTube channel and garnered 10,376,570 views and over 73,500 subscribers before he took his channel offline.

In April 2013, Swann announced he would be leaving WXIX-TV Fox 19 at the end of May.

While working at WXIX-TV, Swann started a Facebook page called "Full Disclosure" where, according to Adweek, he asked "questions about controversial subjects he says are ignored by the national media".

From May 2013 until June 2015, Swann appeared regularly on RT America in Washington, D.C. For three months in 2014 he hosted the Ben Swann Radio Show on the Republic Broadcasting Network which is, according to the media watchdog Media Matters for America, a far-right network which has aired Holocaust denial and other antisemitic conspiracy theories.

In 2017, after his employer, CBS affiliate 46 in Atlanta, aired a Reality Check which presented the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory as potentially true, Swann was forced by WGCL to bring down his Truth in Media website and all of his social media.

About a year later, he was fired when WGCL learned that Swann was planning to relaunch Truth in Media.

In 2017, Swann has sought crowdfunding via his 419,000 Facebook followers for an episode titled, "U.S. and partners intentionally created ISIS".