On Wednesday, CNN president and chairman of WarnerMedia’s news and sports division Jeff Zucker resigned, admitting he had failed to inform CNN of his close relationship with Allison Gollust, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, adding to the cycle of trouble at the network that recently included the firing of former anchor Chris Cuomo over his alleged involvement in helping his brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, deal with sexual misconduct allegations.
Gollust once worked as Andrew Cuomo’s communications director, and CNN’s gushing coverage of Cuomo continued for months before he finally resigned, as seen here.
Ironically, on Monday, CNN’s Brian Stelter, discussing Spotify’s decision to add a content warning to its most popular podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” protested he didn’t know why the public trusted Rogan more than CNN. Stelter first quoted Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, saying, “It is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.”
Stelter continued, “Now, Ek did not mention Joe Rogan at all. But Rogan is at the center of this because of the guests he’s had on this podcast, and the anti-vaccination narratives coming out of this popular podcast. Here’s what Rogan said in an Instagram video overnight:”
Stelter played a clip of Rogan saying, “My pledge to you is that I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives so we can maybe find a better point of view. I don’t want to just show the contrary opinion to what the narrative is. I want to show all kinds of opinions.”
“Which sounds great, but not all opinions are created equal,” Stelter huffed. “You think about major newsrooms like CNN that have health departments and deaths and operations that work hard on verifying information on COVID-19, and then you have talk show stars like Joe Rogan, who just swing it, who make it up as they go along. And because figures like Rogan are trusted by people that don’t trust real newsrooms, we have a tension — a problem that’s much bigger than Spotify, much bigger than any single platform.”
As The Daily Wire reported, Stelter was widely mocked for his comments:
- Tom Bevan, RealClearPolitics: “Approaching parody.”
- Reagan Battalion: “This is what this is about. People like @brianstelter would much rather shut down people like @joerogan, who are far more popular than they or their networks are, instead of doing some soul searching to figure out why people like Rogan are far more popular and trusted.”
- Rav Arora, writer: “This is beyond parody.”
- Beverly Hallberg, District Media Group: “Beware of the mindset that sharing various opinions is dangerous.”
- Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC): “The “newsroom” that pushed 4 years of Russia collusion and ‘mostly peaceful’ protests, or downplayed stories such as covid’s origins, can’t figure out why people started tuning them out.”
- Erick Erickson, radio host: “If the media would engage in just a little bit of self-reflection they might figure out why Joe Rogan gets more listeners/viewers.”
- Ian Miles Cheong, writer: “Most people would sooner trust a drug addicted homeless bum than listen to any of the talking heads on CNN.”
- Ned Ryun, political commentator: “I’d probably trust random names from a phone book more than the ‘newsrooms’ like CNN.”
- Mike Hahn, former Trump official: “Not once do these morons ever ask ‘why does nobody trust us?'”
- Nick Short, political commentator: “‘Newsrooms’ like CNN do not report the news, they create propaganda about the news then report it. That’s a much bigger problem than Joe Rogan or Spotify @brianstelter .”
- Ryan Petty, political commentator: “You are beyond parody @brianstelter.”
- Mollie Hemingway, The Federalist: “I trust perhaps everyone else in the world more than I trust the propaganda press/TV. No one has decisively proven their untrustworthiness more than our corrupt media.”
- Leon Wolf, The Blaze: “Be less self-aware, Brian. If you can.”
- Dan Gainor, NewsBusters: “If CNN wants to fix the problem, then they shouldn’t suck so much.”
- Nick Gillespie, Reason: “More signs this is in some large way a pissing match between old/sunset media and new/sunrise media. @CNN / print vs. @Spotify / interwebs.”
- Accuracy In Media: “Brian thinks very highly of himself.”