Yesterday, Barstool Sports’ founder Dave Portnoy gave a masterclass on how to handle the corrupt corporate media by going on the “offense” and thwarting a Washington Post hit job. After learning about the looming negative Post article by reporter Emily Heil on his Brooklyn, New York One Bite Pizza Festival scheduled for this Saturday, Portnoy cold-called Heil and confronted her for using dishonest media tactics.
Portnoy posted his phone call exchange with Heil on X (formally known as Twitter), and the video has since garnered nearly 30 million views. Since then, Heil and her co-writer Tim Carman have cowered away, protecting their tweets and canceling their interview scheduled for this morning with Portnoy.
Portnoy knew Heil had been contacting advertisers of his pizza Festival, and he asked Heil on the call why she was asking his sponsors how they could support a “misogynistic racist.” Heil immediately denied doing so.
Portnoy didn’t let Heil get away with lying, reading to her out loud an email she sent to one of his advertisers, in which Heil stated that Portnoy “has a history of misogynistic comments and other problematic behavior.” Caught in a lie, Heil was left stuttering and later claimed that this was just one of her “standard” media tactics.
“This is kind of standard journalistic stuff,” said Heil, explaining that she “was hoping for a dialogue with [the advertisers]” and that “indicat[ing] that there might be something negative” in her report on the event was a “reporting tactic” used to
