<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/cnn">CNN’s</a> Brian Stelter, who delights in parroting leftist and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/democratic-party">Democratic Party</a> narratives on his show “Reliable Sources,” will be out of his job soon, according to a new report.
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SOURCE: Stelter is &quot;down to weeks if not days&quot; left at CNN. They go on &quot;He is everything that reminds the new owners of the Zucker era they desperately want to get past&quot; &#8211; More to come.
&mdash; Jon Nicosia (@NewsPolitics) <a href="https://twitter.com/NewsPolitics/status/1537218719017054209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 15, 2022</a></blockquote>
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They continue: &quot;Management is confident Stelter is the one sharing the internal pushback to fellow media reporters while simultaneously stirring discontent within the ranks&quot;
&mdash; Jon Nicosia (@NewsPolitics) <a href="https://twitter.com/NewsPolitics/status/1537219449698516992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 15, 2022</a></blockquote>
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In May, Chris Licht, who has supposedly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-might-dump-overtly-partisan-talent-report">emphasized</a> less opinion-oriented reporting, became the new head of CNN. Last Sunday, “Reliable Sources” had its <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/06/15/brian-stelters-reliable-sources-on-cnn-has-lowest-ratings/?utm_source=NYPTwitter&amp;utm_medium=SocialFlow&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow">worst-rated episode</a> since September 2019, reaching only 580,000 viewers, the smallest audience since September 15, 2019.
In a <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/02/new-cnn-boss-chris-licht-to-focus-on-truth/">memo</a> to employees, Licht wrote, “&#8230; too many people have lost trust in the news media. I think we can be a beacon in regaining that trust by being an organization that exemplifies the best characteristics of journalism: fearlessly speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo, questioning group-think, and educating viewers and readers with straightforward facts and insightful commentary, while always being respectful of differing viewpoints.”
Licht does have a record of partisanship himself, having served as executive producer for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
In April, the daily version of “Reliable Sources” was dropped by CNN after they <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/yikes-shuttering-cnn-host-chris-wallace-pushes-producer-to-make-project-on-his-trump-interviews-during-show">pulled the plug</a> on CNN+.
Reaction to the rumored fall of Stelter came quickly:
https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1537413805713637378
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I still feel bad for <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brianstelter</a> in a way, though I am sure he will be fine financially. But there is no honour among scoundrels. A bucket of rats will get along fine so long as there is enough to eat. But the second the food runs out, they literally devour each other. <a href="https://t.co/3s4EFlf0xs">https://t.co/3s4EFlf0xs</a>
&mdash; Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) <a href="https://twitter.com/thevivafrei/status/1537435243346399232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 16, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Tater 🥔 is toast <a href="https://t.co/lp9eUTvTuN">https://t.co/lp9eUTvTuN</a>
&mdash; Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/JimHansonDC/status/1537416161591173120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 16, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Stelter has displayed his partisanship for years.
In February, Stelter <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/cnn-chief-zucker-resigns-two-days-after-brian-stelter-sneers-over-people-trusting-joe-rogan-more-than-cnn/">ripped</a> podcast host Joe Rogan while trumpeting his own network, babbling, “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&#8217;t trust real newsrooms, we have a tension — a problem that&#8217;s much bigger than Spotify, much bigger than any single platform.”
Last December, Stelter <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/call-out-gop-extremism-brian-stelter-tells-associated-press/">ranted</a> to Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press, “Can you call out GOP extremism?”
Two months before that, Stelter <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnns-stelter-mocks-desantis-for-saying-that-media-lies-nick-sandmann-uses-one-word-to-crush-him">mocked</a> Florida GOP Governor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/ron-desantis">Ron DeSantis</a> after DeSantis had slammed the legacy media, saying they lie to the American people. Nicholas Sandmann, who was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-nicholas-sandmann-nbc-news-reach-settlement-in-defamation-suit">smeared</a> by multiple news outlets, including CNN, after his encounter with a Native American activist after the 2019 March for Life in Washington, D.C., used one word to decimate Stelter: “Howdy.”
In October 2018, Stelter <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/cnns-stelter-blames-fox-news-president-trump-hank-berrien/">ripped</a> Fox News hosts and President Trump as the cause of the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue, asserting that their language helped trigger the shooter who committed the deadliest attack on Jews in America’s history. Stelter called for Fox News hosts to do some “soul-searching.”
Stelter offered <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/cnns-brian-stelter-lets-psychiatrist-claim-trump-ryan-saavedra/">no pushback</a> after psychiatrist Allen Frances compared former President Trump to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
“Lumping the mentally ill with Trump is a terrible insult to the mentally ill and they have enough problems and stigma as it is,” Frances burbled. “The second issue is, calling Trump crazy hides the fact that we&#8217;re crazy for having elected him and even crazier for allowing his crazy policies to persist. Trump is as destructive of person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were.”

CNN Heroes – Red Carpet

‘Down To Weeks If Not Days’: Brian Stelter To Get Pink Slip: Report

Brian Stelter To Lose CNN Gig Soon, Report Says

Brian Stelter

Mainstream Media

Reliable Sources

CNN media analyst David Zurawik blamed former President Donald Trump for &#8220;opening the gates of hell,&#8221; and said that billionaire Elon Musk could not be allowed to &#8220;control discourse in this country.&#8221;
Toward that end, Zurawik used a Sunday morning appearance on &#8220;Reliable Sources&#8221; to call for <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/hate-bigotry-and-misogyny-jameela-jamil-exits-hell-platform-after-musk-twitter-purchase/">additional regulations</a> to limit Musk&#8217;s power.
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CNN&#39;s David Zurawik: &quot;Dangerous&quot; with Elon Musk buying Twitter, we need to look to Europe.
&quot;You need regulation. You cannot let these guys control discourse in this country or we are headed to hell. We are there. Trump opened the gates of hell and now they’re chasing us down.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/QubyKZwVCQ">pic.twitter.com/QubyKZwVCQ</a>
&mdash; Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) <a href="https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11/status/1520790249957429248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2022</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;In 1927 we had the Radio Act, 1934 the Communications Act. Congress stepped in. We made rules. FCC wasn’t great, but it’s still regulating the broadcast industry. You can’t use vulgar language, you can’t do all these things with speech,&#8221; Zurawik began, going on to suggest that with billionaires like Facebook/Instagram&#8217;s Mark Zuckerberg and Musk, all of that was likely to fall by the wayside.
&#8220;We gave over what amounts to our airwaves or our internet waves to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, and we are in so much trouble because those guys believe in making money,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;This is dangerous! We can’t think anymore in this country!&#8221; Zurawik continued. &#8220;I’m serious! We don’t have people in Congress who can make regulations, that can make it work. I think we can look to the Western countries in Europe for how they are trying to limit it. But you need controls on this. You need regulation. You cannot let these guys control discourse in this country, or we are headed to hell! We are there. Trump opened the gates of hell, and now they’re chasing us down!&#8221;
Zurawik was not the only person to suggest that Europe had the right idea when it came to imposing limits on internet speech. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/trump-impeachment-witness-shreds-bidens-government-disinformation-board-needs-a-catchy-slogan/">cheered</a> the Europeans on when they had the chance to impose such regulations just a week earlier.
&#8220;For too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability. The EU is poised to do something about it. I urge our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act across the finish line and bolster global democracy before it&#8217;s too late,&#8221; Clinton tweeted, adding, &#8220;They got it done!&#8221; once the measure had succeeded.
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They got it done! <a href="https://t.co/Wc4kA9DPsb">https://t.co/Wc4kA9DPsb</a>
&mdash; Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) <a href="https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1518641128920256514?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 25, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Elon Musk Buys Social Network Twitter

‘We Are Headed To Hell’: CNN Guest Blames Musk (And Trump) For Twitter Deal In Unhinged Rant

David Zurawik Blames Trump, Musk For Twitter Deal

Donald Trump

Elon Musk

Twitter

Critics ripped into CNN after it was announced Thursday that &#8220;Reliable Sources&#8221; anchor Brian Stelter was slotted to host a daily version of his Sunday morning media show on the network&#8217;s upcoming streaming platform CNN+.
&#8220;If you like his newsletter, you’ll love this show. CNN’s Chief Media Correspondent and Anchor, @BrianStelter, will be hosting Reliable Sources Daily on @CNNPlus this spring,&#8221; CNN&#8217;s communications division tweeted.
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If you like his newsletter, you’ll love this show. CNN’s Chief Media Correspondent and Anchor, <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BrianStelter</a>, will be hosting Reliable Sources Daily on <a href="https://twitter.com/CNNplus?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CNNPlus</a> this spring.
Sign up for updates 👉 <a href="https://t.co/AG3auWDUy1">https://t.co/AG3auWDUy1</a>
Release 👉<a href="https://t.co/DbZZb1poPe">https://t.co/DbZZb1poPe</a> <a href="https://t.co/6TQMa3VpGf">pic.twitter.com/6TQMa3VpGf</a>
&mdash; CNN Communications (@CNNPR) <a href="https://twitter.com/CNNPR/status/1494362439319699456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 17, 2022</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;This will be an hour long daily show of Brian Stelter watching Fox News live and just commenting on it,&#8221; conservative commentator Stephen Miller <a href="https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1494334813603393536">predicted</a>.
A Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-brian-stelter-more-airtime-doubling-down-failure">article published Thursday</a> pointed out the fact that Stelter&#8217;s Sunday show has been struggling to draw viewers, leading some critics to question the wisdom of moving him to a daily program:
<blockquote>The traditional version of Sunday&#8217;s &#8220;Reliable Sources&#8221; on CNN has gone 24 straight telecasts without cracking 900,000 viewer. The last time &#8220;Reliable Sources&#8221; managed to draw one million viewers was on Aug. 29, 2021, when CNN bounced between breaking news coverage of Hurricane Ida and Stelter’s program. 
During February alone, viewership for Stelter’s media affairs program is down 43% among total viewers and 65% among the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults age 25-54 through two episodes, compared to the same month in 2021. The ratings-challenged program has also gone back-to-back weeks averaging fewer than 100,000 demo viewers. </blockquote>
&#8220;Someone needs to explain the business strategy of taking hosts that everyone can watch for free but few choose to, and putting them behind a paywall and believing people will now pay to watch the same people they ignore when offered for free,&#8221; independent journalist <a href="https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1494327901839192073" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Glenn Greenwald tweeted</a>.
&#8220;If CNN’s collapsing ratings weren’t enough to elicit an agonizing reappraisal of their entire situation, the planned rollout of CNN+ surely is,&#8221; Grabien Media founder Tom Elliott told Fox News Digital. &#8220;Rather than using their new subscription-based platform to attempt something new and original that people might actually pay for, the leftover project of Jeff Zucker is instead doubling down on failure. For reasons that defy common sense, CNN apparently thinks that taking their least popular opinionists — Don Lemon &amp; Brian Stelter most notably — and moving them into a less structured and more regular format, will somehow turnaround the network’s cratering business. If ever WarnerMedia needed to stage an intervention, now is that time. And I say this as a former CNN fan.&#8221;
CNN has been dealing with varying degrees of turmoil since it was first revealed last year that former prime time anchor Chris Cuomo was <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/chris-cuomo-advised-andrew-cuomo-on-sexual-harassment-allegations-cnn-wont-punish-him/">advising his brother</a>, former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) as he navigated <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/we-cannot-meet-our-burden-at-trial-albany-da-wont-prosecute-andrew-cuomo-for-sexual-harassment/">numerous accusations</a> of sexual harassment and assault. Cuomo was later fired after allegations against him surfaced as well, but the investigation into his actions also led to the <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/chris-blew-the-place-up-jake-tapper-blames-cuomo-for-zucker-ouster/">abrupt exit</a> of former CNN President Jeff Zucker and his paramour Allison Gollust — allegedly because they failed to disclose their personal relationship.
The Daily Wire’s first original film, Shut In, has made its cinematic debut, being met with rave reviews. The Daily Wire is building an alternative to the leftist entertainment industry, one gripping movie at a time. Join us in this mission and stream Shut In today by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe-shutin?utm_campaign=shutin&amp;utm_medium=editorial&amp;utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_content=subscribe_shutin&amp;utm_talent=dailywire" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe-shutin?utm_campaign%3Dshutin%26utm_medium%3Deditorial%26utm_source%3Dfacebook%26utm_content%3Dsubscribe_shutin%26utm_talent%3Ddailywire&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1644699149485000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0hSL9sbxEl3fLS6INjonzw">becoming a Daily Wire member</a>.

The 15th Annual CNN Heroes: All-Star Tribute

‘Explain The Business Strategy’: CNN Mocked Over Brian Stelter’s New Streaming Gig

CNN should fire Brian Stelter as its chief media correspondent for failing to report on network president Jeffrey Zucker’s longstanding affair with a co-worker, a network insider told a British newspaper.
“The network needs to step up and fire Brian Stelter,” the CNN employee told The Daily Mail.
The employee said it’s unconscionable that Stelter allowed himself to get scooped on the story of Zucker’s intimate relationship with Allison Gollust, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer.
“He is allegedly our top media reporter &#8211; yet he failed to report on the scoop that everyone in the office knew,” <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10469837/Insiders-calling-CNN-anchor-Brian-Stelter-FIRED.html">said</a> the CNN insider. “And if he wants to say he didn&#8217;t know, he is truly terrible at his job.”
Zucker, who has held the office of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/profiles/jeff-zucker-profile">president</a> of CNN Worldwide since 2013 and has been chairman of WarnerMedia News and Sports, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-cnns-jeff-zucker-resigns-due-to-undisclosed-consensual-relationship-with-colleague">resigned</a> Wednesday after admitting to a “consensual relationship” with a close colleague. The couple have worked together closely for 20 years at multiple networks. Katie Couric <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/business/media/jeff-zucker-allison-gollust-cnn.html">described</a> the couple as “joined at the hip” in her 2021 memoir. One source told the Daily Mail their relationship, which the source says began much earlier than they let on to the public, was “an open secret.”
“Brian Stelter should be calling his agent to start looking for another job,” said an individual the newspaper identified only as “a cable news veteran” who wished to remain anonymous. “He&#8217;s been Jeff Zucker&#8217;s water boy for years and no one believes he didn&#8217;t know about all of this.”
“He&#8217;s been sitting on his moral high horse doing Jeff&#8217;s bidding and ripping Fox [News] and every other media outlet that Jeff tells him to while his ratings crash and burn. Where was he on the biggest story at his own network after chastising everyone else?” the veteran asked.
The affair reportedly came to the network’s attention during its probe of Chris Cuomo, whom the network let go following allegations that he had advised his brother, former <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-fall-of-andrew-cuomo-how-an-empire-built-on-fear-came-crashing-down">New York Governor Andrew Cuomo</a>, and that the CNN host had been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/chris-cuomo-out-at-siriusxm-radio-show">accused of sexual harassment</a> in his own right. <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jeff-zucker-cnn-investigation-affair-cuomo-1294608/">Rolling Stone</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnns-stelter-we-will-discuss-zuckers-resignation-janice-dean-try-discussing-zucker-covering-up-nursing-home-deaths-andrew-cuomos-role">reported</a> that “Zucker and Gollust were advising the governor at the beginning of the Covid pandemic in ways not dissimilar to what led to Chris Cuomo’s dismissal.” Jake Tapper suspected that Chris Cuomo or his legal team had reason to leak word about Zucker’s relationship if CNN refused to pay the remaining $18 million of Cuomo’s contract, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/cnn-president-jeff-zucker-resigns-citing-relationship-with-colleague-11643818528">according</a> to the Wall Street Journal. AT&amp;T reportedly negotiated with Zucker to resign in exchange for settling Cuomo’s contractual obligations for $9 million, <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/02/03/what-jeff-zuckers-resignation-could-mean-for-chris-cuomos-potential-cnn-payout/">reported</a> the New York Post.
In Zucker’s resignation memo, which was shared by Stelter, the CNN boss referred to his nine years with the network as “an amazing run,” although the network continually lost viewers during his tenure, with the exception of one day last January.
Stelter, the host of “Reliable Sources,” has downplayed the network&#8217;s pronounced ratings slide, <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/cnns-brian-stelter-responds-to-trump-ratings-attack-president-is-misinformed/">saying</a> that “misleading ratings #’s get weaponized by Trumpworld.” Yet Stelter has felt the brunt of falling ratings and diminishing audience trust. “In December overall, according to Nielsen ratings, “Reliable Sources” averaged 693,000 viewers with 152,000 in the demo. Fox News’ 11 a.m. ET competitor, “Media Buzz,” averaged 1.460 million viewers, of which 217,000 were in the demo,” reported The Wrap.
Last Sunday, Stelter lamented the fact that podcaster Joe Rogan inspired greater confidence in his listeners than CNN. “Not all opinions are created equal,&#8221; Stelter <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-chief-zucker-resigns-two-days-after-brian-stelter-sneers-over-people-trusting-joe-rogan-more-than-cnn">told</a> his audience. &#8220;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 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-worlds-largest-broadcasters-fact-check-of-joe-rogan-podcast-goes-quite-wrong">Joe Rogan, who just swing it</a>, 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.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

CNN ‘Needs To Step Up And Fire Brian Stelter’: CNN Insider

Jeff Zucker

Media Bias

CNN anchor Brian Stelter claimed that &#8220;white identity politics&#8221; was fueling Fox News personalities&#8217; criticisms of President Joe Biden&#8217;s imminent Supreme Court nomination.
Stelter said during Sunday&#8217;s broadcast of &#8220;Reliable Sources&#8221; that Fox News — along with other conservative radio and television outlets — was spoiling for a &#8220;fight&#8221; over whoever Biden might nominate, suggesting that the network&#8217;s intent was to sow division in an effort to drive ratings.
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CNN’s <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brianstelter</a>: Fox News is attacking Biden’s racial/gender criteria for his SCOTUS pick because of “white identity politics&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/4r9276WjMp">pic.twitter.com/4r9276WjMp</a>
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1487841868146692097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2022</a></blockquote>
Stelter began by noting that a number of Republicans had suggested that President Biden — in his <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/mr-biden-was-thrown-a-lifeline-chuck-todd-says-supreme-court-pick-could-save-bidens-plummeting-polls/">efforts to replace</a> retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer — might not face the kind of opposition former President Donald Trump faced with his nominations, mainly because replacing Stephens with another liberal justice would do little to change the ideological balance of the court.
He then argued that some in media — particularly those on the right — actually preferred a battle.
&#8220;Let’s be honest, Fox wants a fight. Rightwing radio and TV wants a fight,&#8221; Stelter said. &#8220;They need a fight over the Supreme Court. They are already starting a fight that’s rooted in white identity politics. All of Fox’s prime time shows are outraged that Biden has committed to nominating a justice who is black and female.&#8221;
Stelter showed clips of Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham — who said that Biden&#8217;s promise to nominate a black female to the exclusion of all other demographics was in itself divisive, not to mention racist and sexist. Stelter then claimed that the Fox News hosts were the problem, and that their comments were intentionally fueling a state of &#8220;permanent political warfare.&#8221;
Stephen Miller pushed back on Stelter&#8217;s claims in a <a href="https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1487843020393226241">tweet</a>, saying, &#8220;Joe Biden has not made this pick yet. Joe Biden has eliminated any consideration of any judge of Asian or Hispanic ethnicity (among others!). The only person who made this about identity politics is Joe Biden.&#8221;
&#8220;Does it matter to @brianstelter that 76% of Americans just told a leading pollster they oppose limiting Supreme Court hires to 6% of the population (based on immutable characteristics)?&#8221; Zaid Jilani <a href="https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/1487889256785883137">added</a>, referencing an <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/mainstream-poll-reveals-pushback-to-bidens-promise-of-nominating-black-woman-to-supreme-court/">ABC/IPSOS poll</a> that said a commanding majority of Americans believed Biden should make his Supreme Court choice by considering all possible nominees rather than adhering to his <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/as-supreme-court-hears-challenge-against-race-based-college-admissions-joe-biden-wants-race-based-supreme-court-nominee/">campaign promise</a> for the sake of doing so. &#8220;Why is everything always about Fox News? Why not report these things accurately?&#8221;
National Review Editor Rich Lowry <a href="https://twitter.com/RichLowry/status/1487888474523029505">added</a>, &#8220;The country has gotten to a truly bizarre place when it’s &#8216;white identity politics&#8217; to maintain that Supreme Court picks should be made on the merits.&#8221;
&#8220;The View&#8221; cohost Ana Navarro weighed in on Biden&#8217;s promise — and critics who accused the president of engaging in &#8220;identity politics&#8221; — earlier in the week. &#8220;All politics is &#8216;identity politics,’” she said, arguing that everyone — regardless of race, gender or creed — wanted to vote for someone with whom they identified in some way.
&#8220;Why is putting a black woman ‘identity politics,’ but putting a conservative, who you agree with ideologically, not ‘identity politics’?” she asked, adding that it was &#8220;hypocritical&#8221; for people to suggest that race and gender were the only factors that influence &#8220;identity politics.&#8221;

‘They Need A Fight’: Brian Stelter Blames ‘White Identity Politics’ For Fox News Criticism Of Biden SCOTUS Pick

Fox News

Joe Biden

Supreme Court

CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter excoriated Fox News for broadcasting an allegedly “incendiary” phrase that he said CNN would “never” repeat on the air. Unfortunately, Anderson Cooper had used that exact terminology last Thursday, and a review of network transcripts shows that CNN hosts have repeated it at least half a dozen times in precisely the way Stelter called unacceptable.
Stelter dedicated <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/rs/date/2022-01-23/segment/01">part</a> of the January 23 episode of “Reliable Sources” to reading banners Fox News had posted on the screen during the past week, including one that <a href="https://twitter.com/ReliableSources/status/1485326898498617350">read</a>, “The Biden administration is a clown car driving off a cliff.” An outraged Stelter said, “That&#8217;s the great example of the incendiary rhetoric that you would have never seen, let’s say from another channel during the Trump years or now during the Biden years.” Such language illustrates “the imagined drama that Fox presents every day” in the “Fox-uverse,” he added.
But his colleagues at CNN have used that exact phrase — and many worse ones — about former President Donald Trump, Trump administration officials, and Republican congressional leaders as recently as three days earlier:
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CNN senior media reporter <a href="https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@oliverdarcy</a> compares the way Fox reports crime in the US to an Instagram filter, saying the final product is distorted and &quot;no longer reflects reality.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/S9QcwZvLD2">pic.twitter.com/S9QcwZvLD2</a>
&mdash; Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) <a href="https://twitter.com/ReliableSources/status/1485326898498617350?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 23, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Anderson Cooper (“Anderson Cooper 360” on January 20, 2022): Anderson Cooper, who replaced Chris Cuomo as CNN’s top-rated host, likened a report about the 2020 Trump campaign to a clown car last Thursday. “It&#8217;s like a clown car on fire,” Cooper <a href="https://twitter.com/kikimelendez/status/1484547274931847172">said</a> in exasperation. ‘Yeah,” agreed a giggly Pamela Brown, CNN’s senior Washington correspondent, who then <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/acd/date/2022-01-20/segment/01">apologized</a> for being unable to respond to Cooper’s next question. “Sorry, I was thinking about the clown car on fire analogy,” she explained.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I bet the DOJ, the FBI and the CIA are still investigating DID TRUMP KNOW? 😂😂😂 Like a clown car on fire&#39;: Cooper reacts to Giuliani&#39;s fake electors plot <a href="https://t.co/AC7hPwu0qD">https://t.co/AC7hPwu0qD</a> via <a href="https://twitter.com/YouTube?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@YouTube</a>
&mdash; Kiki Melendez (@kikimelendez) <a href="https://twitter.com/kikimelendez/status/1484547274931847172?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 21, 2022</a></blockquote>
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John King (“Inside Politics” on December 16, 2021): John King used the analogy to make the first year of the Trump administration seem worse than Joe Biden’s first year in office. King noted that Republicans faltered on their “central promise” to “repeal and replace Obamacare” in 2017, while Biden failed to pass the  <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/whats-in-joe-bidens-build-back-better-act">“Build Back Better” act</a> in 2021. But at least last year, “we have not had the clown car routine that that was that debate” over Obamacare, King <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/ip/date/2021-12-16/segment/01">said</a>. Still, he considered Biden’s inability to pass his signature social spending legislation as “a major failure.”
Don Lemon (“Don Lemon Tonight” on November 29, 2021): “The GOP is just a circus right now. That&#8217;s just the honest truth. It&#8217;s a clown show,” Lemon <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnnt/date/2021-11-29/segment/01">declared</a> last November. “The GOP is just loading up the clown car of their never-ending circus.”
Anderson Cooper (“Anderson Cooper 360” on September 16, 2021): Last fall, Anderson Cooper cited anti-Trump biographies such as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dem-congressman-blows-a-hole-in-bob-woodwards-new-book-peril">“Peril” by Bob Woodward</a> as evidence the former president became mentally unhinged in his last days in office. “I mean, we knew it was, you know, a clown car going on and possibly going off the cliff,” Cooper <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/acd/date/2021-09-16/segment/01">said</a>. “But I mean, it&#8217;s extraordinary to see this reporting &#8230; Woodward and Costa also report on the former President&#8217;s mental faculties.” Cooper use the exact analogy which Stelter condemned Fox News for making. Stelter did not condemn Anderson Cooper for “exaggerating” or “inventing” concerns about President Trump’s mental health, a frequent topic of CNN speculation since 2015.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“Don Lemon Tonight” on July 19, 2021): Not every use of this “incendiary” phrase came from one of CNN’s anchors, but it sometimes came with their approval. During an interview with Don Lemon about the congressional committee investigating the January 6 riot, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) <a href="https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1417540387552563203">said</a>, “I think Kevin McCarthy has decided his role as the minority leader in the House of Representative is to essentially be chauffeur of the clown car.” Not only did Lemon <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnnt/date/2021-07-19/segment/01">not push back</a>, but Brianna Keilar decided to <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/nday/date/2021-07-20/segment/02">reair</a> that soundbite on CNN’s “New Day” the next morning.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/RepAOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RepAOC</a> on GOP Jan. 6 committee picks: &quot;Kevin McCarthy has decided that his role as a minority leader in the House of Representatives is to essentially be chauffeur of the clown car.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/FD0xnPT6xS">https://t.co/FD0xnPT6xS</a> <a href="https://t.co/z9XcHb5G4g">pic.twitter.com/z9XcHb5G4g</a>
&mdash; The Hill (@thehill) <a href="https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1417540387552563203?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 20, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Van Jones (“The Van Jones Show” on November 10, 2018): Former Obama administration <a href="https://therightswriter.com/2010/12/more-stealth-reparations-obama-enacts-van-jones-indian-energy-plan/">Green Jobs</a> Czar <a href="https://therightswriter.com/2009/09/conspiracy-czar/">Van Jones</a> opened <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/vjs/date/2018-11-10/segment/01">a 2018 episode</a> of his eponymous CNN show by applying the “incendiary” phrase to Donald Trump. “We had an insane clown car of a presidential press conference, after which Trump just up and fired Jeff Sessions,” Jones told CNN’s viewers. “Now, that&#8217;s a decision that could derail Bob Mueller&#8217;s Russia investigation, which could lead to a full-blown constitutional crisis.” In reality, the Mueller report would <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/adam-schiff-biggest-problem-with-mueller-report-was-it-wasnt-brought-to-life-through-public-hearings">conclude</a> that its “investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”
Brianna Keilar (“Wolf” on July 19, 2017): While guest-hosting Wolf Blitzer’s afternoon show in the early days of the Trump presidency, Brianna Keilar used a familiar phrase while discussing the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia with CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash. “Dana, when you look at Republicans on Capitol Hill, how are they reacting to what – it&#8217;s almost like a clown car, right?” Keilar <a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/wolf/date/2017-07-19/segment/02">asked</a> Bash, who did not rebuke her colleague’s choice of words.
Of course, “clown car” is far from the most offensive or polarizing phrase uttered on CNN. The Lincoln Project’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/us/politics/lincoln-project-weaver.html">co-founder</a> Rick Wilson called then-candidate Donald Trump a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9noJXJXdE">douche canoe</a>” who lacks “gravitas” in 2015, while anchor Jim Acosta has earned CNN a reputation as a home of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/can-partisanship-and-profanity-save-cnn-from-its-ratings-collapse">rampant profanity</a> for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jim-acosta-i-hate-to-use-the-word-bullst-here-are-8-times-hes-used-it-since-may">repeatedly using the phrase “bulls**t”</a> on the air.
Stelter’s comments came during a segment in which Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-guest-fox-news-invented-scary-stories-about-a-senile-president-and-crt-brainwashing-kids">insisted</a> that stories about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trafficked-how-joe-bidens-open-border-policies-have-fueled-americas-fentanyl-epidemic">illegal immigration</a>, Joe <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-looks-like-hes-always-waking-up-from-heavy-anesthesia-foreign-media-sounds-off-on-presidents-cognitive-decline">Biden’s mental fitness</a>, and public schools <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/here-are-5-ways-the-media-is-trying-to-mislead-you-on-critical-race-theory">teaching</a> ideologically polarizing concepts like <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/what-is-critical-race-theory-breaking-down-the-ideology-thats-hitting-schools-across-the-country">Critical Race Theory</a> had been “exaggerated” or “invented out of whole cloth” by Fox News and others.
This is not the first time Brian Stelter has condemned other media outlets for sins committed by his own network. Last September, Stelter bashed other news outlets for spreading a “faulty media narrative” about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hype-and-spin-counting-down-the-top-5-non-stories-of-2021">Border Patrol agents allegedly whipping Haitians</a> attempting to enter the United States illegally in Del Rio, Texas — an error CNN network had repeatedly reported for much of <a href="//AEA918A0-AD6A-4846-9325-7DC9929314A1/about%20the%20congressional%20committee%20investigating%20the%20January%206%20riot">the previous week</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Brian Stelter Claims CNN Would ‘Never’ Air An ‘Incendiary’ Phrase That Anderson Cooper Used Thursday

Trump Derangement Syndrome

CNN commentator and Washington Post syndicated columnist Catherine Rampell claimed Sunday that Fox News had exaggerated stories about a &#8220;senile president&#8221; and Critical Race Theory (CRT) &#8220;brainwashing kids&#8221; — among other topics — or worse, had &#8220;invented&#8221; those stories &#8220;out of whole cloth.&#8221;
Rampell joined anchor <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/brian-stelter-says-his-phone-was-lighting-up-over-cuomo-staffers-saying-get-rid-of-him/">Brian Stelter</a> on his Sunday morning media show, &#8220;<a href="https://dailywire.com/news/unreliable-sources-cnns-brian-stelter-covers-ryan-saavedra/">Reliable Sources</a>,&#8221; and she claimed that stories like those were targeted to a specific audience and designed to spike the blood pressure over issues that weren&#8217;t &#8220;actually mortal threats.&#8221;
Stelter began the segment with a scrolling list of Fox News chyrons, saying that if one were simply to watch the coverage on that network, they might get the impression that America had &#8220;gone to hell,&#8221; and that the quality of life for most people was just short of unbearable.
&#8220;America as an &#8216;apocalyptic hellscape,&#8217; that was one of the actual banners,&#8221; Stelter continued, arguing that Fox News seemed intent on painting President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration as &#8220;a clown car driving off a cliff.&#8221;
CNN&#8217;s Oliver Darcy described Fox News&#8217; coverage as an &#8220;Instagram filter,&#8221; arguing that the story might be true to start out with but the presentation is what makes things appear distorted.
&#8220;Catherine, when we talk about polls showing most Americans think the country is on the wrong track, most Americans are filled with doom and gloom, we need to link it back to the media coverage,&#8221; Stelter continued.
&#8220;Obviously they’re getting that messaging from the media they consume. That set of headlines that you just scrolled through, I could feel my blood pressure rising just reading those. That’s the goal, right? The goal of this kind of coverage is to freak people out, to cause them to live in fear,&#8221; Rampell replied.
Rampell went on to suggest that coverage also focused on promoting the fear of issues that were less likely to be &#8220;mortal threats&#8221; while downplaying issues that she believed were more serious.
&#8220;Ironically a lot of the fearmongering is about the things that are not actually mortal threats and then there is ignoring the things that are mortal threats, you know, COVID isn’t real and climate change isn’t real,&#8221; Rampell added. &#8220;I would argue that, to me anyway, those things are a little scarier or have been scarier at various points in the past couple years. Instead it’s about the immigrant hoards and a senile president and <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/governor-youngkin-signs-11-orders-on-day-one-in-office-includes-crt-ban-investigating-loudoun-county-officials/">Critical Race Theory</a> brainwashing your kids, things that are if not just exaggerated, are invented out of whole cloth.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/crampell?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@crampell</a> to <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brianstelter</a>: Fox News&#8217; coverage of the border crisis &#8220;and the senile president and Critical Race Theory brainwashing your kids, and things that are, you know, if not just exaggerated, invented out of whole cloth.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/fWbGl51ZV3">pic.twitter.com/fWbGl51ZV3</a>
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) <a href="https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11/status/1485287348170629123?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 23, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Fox News national correspondent <a href="https://twitter.com/BillFOXLA/status/1485288459338227718">Bill Melugin</a>, who has done quite a bit of on-location reporting on the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, responded to the segment with just one word: WOW.

Pardon The Disruption: Steve Case On Entrepreneurs – 2015 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival

CNN Guest: Fox News ‘Invented’ Scary Stories About A ‘Senile President’ And CRT ‘Brainwashing Kids’

The two biggest misconceptions about the legacy media are “that we are lying” and that they manifest “political bias,” according to CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” The media’s bias actually benefits the people journalists are biased against, the show insisted.
“The single biggest misconception is that we are lying,” guest Mara Schiavocampo told host Brian Stelter on Sunday’s episode, which tackled alleged common myths about the state of American journalism.
“There is a lot of media mistrust,” she said accurately. Schiavocampo said she frequently encounters media misconceptions “when I’m at a cocktail party.”
“I hear this all the time. And here&#8217;s what I would love to correct about that misperception: We are human. We make mistakes.” But she added that “most often,” when people point out examples of the media’s lies, “what they&#8217;re pointing to is an example of a mistake, not an intentional lie.”
Neither she nor Stelter addressed “60 Minutes” reporter Sharyn Alfonsi accusing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) of corruption, then <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cbs-slammed-for-smearing-ron-desantis-on-60-minutes-one-of-the-more-blatant-political-hatchet-jobs">editing out the substantive part</a> of his response, which refuted her allegation.
Mistakes are “almost always innocent,” Stelter said. Schiavocampo asserted, “We do not have malicious intent.”
Neither mentioned CNN contributor Reza Aslan, who <a href="https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2019/01/20/reza-aslan-who-cried-at-the-gillette-commercial-thinks-covington-catholic-hs-student-has-a-punchable-face/">suggested</a> he’d like to punch 16-year-old Nick Sandmann in the face during his viral stand-off with left-wing activist Nathan Phillips. “Honest question. Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?” Aslan tweeted of the teenager. Earlier, in 2017, Aslan had called President Donald Trump a  “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-cancels-hosts-show-after-he-calls-trump-piece-hank-berrien">piece of s***</a>.”
CNN continued enumerating the common lies and errors about the media, with Shiavocampo saying “another big” misconception about the legacy media is that reporters suffuse their coverage with their own “political bias.” She said it seems “really ironic,” but “journalists are aware of our own political bias,” and so “we&#8217;ll overcompensate to make sure the other side really gets a fair amount of coverage and really gets explained properly.”
“So in my view, when we do have a political bias, it&#8217;s the other view that actually benefits from that because we&#8217;re trying to counter our own human impulses,” she claimed.
“That&#8217;s very interesting,” replied Stelter, who said that mistakes often creep in because of the network’s “crazy workflow.”
In reality, CNN has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rick-santorums-firing-proves-cnn-doesnt-want-to-hear-anyone-who-sounds-like-you">systematically purged</a> every contributor who expressed the view of the 78 million Americans who voted for the Republican ticket last November. After the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-fires-rick-santorum-after-he-claimed-founding-fathers-birthed-a-nation-from-nothing">firing of former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum</a> in May, nearly half of CNN’s remaining “Republican” commentators <a href="https://freebeacon.com/media/nearly-half-of-cnns-republican-commentators-are-voting-for-biden/">endorsed</a> Joe Biden in advance of the 2020 election: Amanda Carpenter, S.E. Cupp, former Congressman Charlie Dent, Ana Navarro, former Ohio Governor John Kasich, and “Anonymous” author Miles Taylor. The network’s <a href="https://barrettsportsmedia.com/2021/12/13/former-trump-communications-director-alyssa-farah-joins-cnn/">latest hire</a>, Alyssa Farah, has also been <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/01/politics/alyssa-farah-trump-covid-test-biden-debate-cnntv/index.html">highly critical</a> of former President Donald Trump. Instead, CNN host Don Lemon said everyone who voted for the Trump-Pence ticket voted to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-anchor-everyone-who-voted-for-trump-sided-with-the-klan-nazis-rioters">associate themselves</a> with neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. He featured no opposing viewpoint.
Stelter and Schiavocampo went on to address why CNN often does not cover stories that have already circulated on social media. “Verification takes time,” she replied.
That does not explain CNN’s error-laden coverage of numerous recent stories. For instance, in September, Stelter criticized a “faulty media narrative” that erroneously claimed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-slams-faulty-media-narrative-of-border-patrol-whipping-haitians-which-it-pushed-for-a-week">Border Patrol agents whipped illegal immigrants from Haiti</a> attempting to cross into Del Rio, Texas. He did not mention that CNN had repeated the same narrative at least seven times in the past week.
Nor did CNN await “verification” before presenting Nick Sandmann and other students of Kentucky’s Covington Catholic High School as aggressively mocking American Indians based on their ethnicity.
“CNN’s tagline is ‘facts first.’ And what we believe their reporting was in this circumstance was lies first, cover up second, and facts not yet determined by that organization,” Sandmann’s attorney <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-covington-catholic-student-nick-sandmann-gets-settlement-from-cnn-after-275-million-lawsuit?utm_campai">told</a> Fox News. “That’s millions and millions and millions of repetitions of the lies and falsehoods that CNN spread.” CNN ultimately <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-covington-catholic-student-nick-sandmann-gets-settlement-from-cnn-after-275-million-lawsuit?utm_campai">settled Sandmann’s $275 million lawsuit</a> against the network on January 7 for an undisclosed sum.
When Stelter lamented the fact that Governor DeSantis has said conservatives should “assume” the legacy media are lying, Sandmann <a href="https://twitter.com/N1ckSandmann/status/1453035437489074183">pointed</a> to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnns-stelter-mocks-desantis-for-saying-that-media-lies-nick-sandmann-uses-one-word-to-crush-him">his own story</a> as an example.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Howdy 🤠 <a href="https://t.co/J6949IkMSS">https://t.co/J6949IkMSS</a>
&mdash; Nicholas Sandmann (@N1ckSandmann) <a href="https://twitter.com/N1ckSandmann/status/1453035437489074183?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 26, 2021</a></blockquote>
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The ratings of Stelter’s show, which frequently critiques Fox News while ignoring his own network’s foibles, have plummeted throughout 2021.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Brian Stelter.

‘The Single Biggest Misconception Is That We Are Lying’: CNN Contributor

While legacy news outlets continue to pride themselves on their reputation as “the most trusted name in news,” they have often fallen short of the facts in the one department most pivotal to maintaining journalistic credibility: their fact-checkers.
“Facts are facts. They aren’t colored by emotion or bias. They are indisputable. There is no alternative to a fact,” <a href="https://www.cnncreativemarketing.com/project/cnn_factsfirst/">wrote</a> CNN’s Creative Marketing department. “That’s why, at CNN, we start with the facts first.”
CNN’s purported commitment to truth goes so far that prime time host Don Lemon said that U.S. internet users should only be able to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/all-social-media-users-should-be-doxxed-opinions-verified-as-true-don-lemon">express their opinion if it is “true,”</a> because social media outlets should only print “opinions based in fact.”
The use of “fact-checking” to silence others long ago escaped CNN and metastasized throughout all media, traditional and online.
As Mark Hemingway recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-myth-of-fact-checking-how-facebook-created-the-worlds-largest-censorship-operation">wrote</a> in a Reader’s Pass article for The Daily Wire, the great social media purge of all things conservative began with its decision to ban Infowars founder Alex Jones. Jones’ ouster “<a href="https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1017242469308788741">came shortly after a pressure campaign launched by CNN</a>, a network that, ironically enough, had spent the last few years indulging in nonstop Trump-Russia reporting that wasn’t any less conspiratorial than many of Jones’ rantings,” Hemingway writes.
Hemingway worked at The Weekly Standard, which hired a fact-checker in cooperation with Facebook. This person would issue official proclamations about stories’ truth or falsehood, which would influence whether social media suppressed shares of certain stories on that basis.
The Weekly Standard <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-weekly-standard-be-shut-down-hank-berrien">announced</a> it would close in December 2018.
“[A]fter we all lost our jobs, The Weekly Standard’s former fact-checker, the one who dared to express concern about Facebook becoming an engine of global censorship, got a job as a fact checker for CNN – the very news outlet that instigated Facebook’s Alex Jones ban,” Hemingway wrote. More from Hemingway:
<blockquote>The editor-in-chief of The Weekly Standard who signed off on our Facebook partnership has since gone on to start a new publication called The Dispatch that still participates in Facebook’s fact checking program. Last year, just before the election, a fact check from The Dispatch got a pro-life group’s ads banned from Facebook. Their fact check said it was unfair to claim Joe Biden supports late-term abortion. The Dispatch would later admit their fact check was “published in error.” </blockquote>
As Hemingway’s article shows, fact-checkers often walk through the revolving door between traditional journalism and social media, with each influencing the other.
Perhaps the most influential fact-checker in the country, The Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler, has often been caught in the net of misinformation. Last May, Kessler had <a href="https://twitter.com/glennkesslerwp/status/1256267931220049920">criticized</a> Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for raising the possibility that the novel coronavirus that caused the global COVID-19 pandemic may have originated in a lab like the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “It is virtually impossible for this virus jump from the lab,” Kessler tweeted. In May, he published a fact-check revealing that “the Wuhan lab-leak theory <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/from-impossible-to-credible-how-the-legacy-media-is-desperately-spinning-their-wuhan-lab-flip-flop">suddenly became credible</a>.” While he claimed “new evidence” led to his conclusion, the Trump administration had released the relevant information on January 15, five months earlier.
Kessler went on to fact-check the life of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/will-the-media-fact-check-joe-bidens-grandpop-like-they-did-tim-scotts">Tim Scott’s grandfather</a>, who lived in the South under Jim Crow, without coming to any conclusion about the veracity of Scott’s statement that his family went “from cotton to Congress in one lifetime.”
In the waning days of the 2020 campaign, his fellow fact-checker, Meg Kelly, claimed Republicans were “misleading” voters by sharing a video showing Joe Biden apparently confused that he was running for president against George W. Bush. Biden <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/1320546729503137794">said</a>, “Four more years of George, uh, George, uh, he, uh, are going to find ourselves in position where if, uh, Trump gets elected, uh, we are going to be, uh, going to be in a different world.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Joe Biden confuses President Trump with George W. Bush: “because of who I’m running against…George, ah, George” <a href="https://t.co/ujAni2Q7Gh">pic.twitter.com/ujAni2Q7Gh</a>
&mdash; Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/1320546729503137794?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 26, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The Washington Post raised doubt about Biden’s words, then asserted, “Biden could have been referring to George Lopez, who had originally asked the question.” It overlooked Biden’s long history of muddled statements about leaders’ names, including mixing up then-UK Prime Minister Theresa May as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-has-freudian-slip-speech-connected-first-james-barrett">the late Margaret Thatcher</a>.
Republican National Committee rapid response director Steve Guest <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/26/no-biden-did-not-confuse-george-w-bush-donald-trump/">responded</a>: “This isn’t a ‘fact check.’ It’s the Washington Post doing the Biden campaign’s bidding to cover up what Biden actually said.”
Neither fact-checker took their publication to task when it <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/is-anti-biden-criticism-really-far-more-vulgar-and-widespread-than-any-other-president">claimed</a> the “current eruption of anti-Biden signs and chants, however, is on another level, far more vulgar and widespread” than anti-Republican sentiment, although figures on the Left repeatedly depicted or fantasized about the assassination of both <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/election-night-kathy-griffin-retweets-infamous-pic-of-her-with-trumps-severed-head">President Donald Trump</a>and <a href="https://therightswriter.com/2009/05/all-the-rage/">George W. Bush</a>.
The pattern stretches back years, if not decades. As Jemima Kelly of the Financial Times <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/69e43380-dd6d-4240-b5e1-47fc1f2f0bdc">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>When Donald Trump said last May he was “confident” that a vaccine would be ready by the end of 2020, the US president was upbraided by NBC with what has become in recent years a popular journalistic and political device: the “fact check”. “Experts say he needs a ‘miracle’ to be right,” the broadcaster declared.</blockquote>
“It wasn’t facts that were being checked,” Kelly concluded. “Fact-checking can be a powerful tool in the fight against online falsehood. But it can be used as a means of censorship if not only facts but also opinions and narratives are checked.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

In this photo illustration a CNN (Cable News Network) logo

‘At CNN, We Start With Facts First’: How Media Fact-Checkers Mislead About Facts

Fact Check

Glenn Kessler

Academia, the legacy media, and the entertainment industry’s embrace of Woke ideology amounts to another form of warfare by elites on the American working class, a media critic has told CNN. Woke ideology, which prioritizes the embrace of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/what-is-critical-race-theory-breaking-down-the-ideology-thats-hitting-schools-across-the-country">Critical Race Theory</a>, masks the most powerful forces in society’s exclusion of and contempt for those in much more precarious financial positions, she said.
This results in “affluent white liberals using the real pain of black Americans in order to withdraw from the common good and abandon the working class of all races,” said Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek and author of the book “Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy.”
“A lot of this conversation around Wokeness is actually about class,&#8221; she said.
“We are hiding a class divide in America,” she told Brian Stelter on Sunday’s episode of “Reliable Sources,” sounding a note not often heard on CNN. “We are hiding the total dispossession of the working class of all races by focusing on a very highly specialized, academic language around race.”
When Stelter implied that Glenn Youngkin’s victory in last week’s Virginia governor’s race called her thesis into question, she replied, “The media&#8217;s response to Youngkin&#8217;s victory is literally the reason that he won.”
She noted that hosts on MSNBC began to spin the victory by saying, “White supremacy wins again. Racism wins again,” but in fact, his lieutenant governor, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/winsome-sears-calls-out-joy-reid-over-msnbc-analysts-rant">Winsome Sears</a>, “will be the first black woman to hold that job.” She added that his ticket attracted broad and diverse support statewide. “Glenn Youngkin managed to flip majority black districts, when he managed to get between 40% and 50% of Latino voters. Are all those people white supremacists? Of course they’re not.”
She said Youngkin voters said they “worried about number one, the economy … and number two, schooling. And it seems to me it is such a self-own” for the media “to tell people who are worried about the economy that that is white supremacy.”
“You are essentially criminalizing the views of working-class Americans,” she told Stelter. “You saw the same thing with the conversation around Critical Race Theory,” when pundits said that “these people don&#8217;t know what Critical Race Theory is” and insisted, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/crt-teacher-crt-isnt-taught-in-schools">falsely</a>, that it is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/here-are-5-ways-the-media-is-trying-to-mislead-you-on-critical-race-theory">not taught</a> in public schools.
“That is not a political statement. That is a class statement,” she said. “They are not educated enough to be opposed to Critical Race Theory. How dare they oppose it.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Short clips of my interview with <a href="https://twitter.com/bungarsargon?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@bungarsargon</a> have been making the Twitter rounds. So here&#39;s the entire segment. She began by saying &quot;it&#39;s very brave to have me on,&quot; so I asked why&#8230; <a href="https://t.co/1nxX1Cb1fl">pic.twitter.com/1nxX1Cb1fl</a>
&mdash; Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1457827597736349705?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 8, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
One such example took place just one day earlier, on MSNBC’s “The Cross Connection,” when Nation magazine’s Elie Mystal <a href="https://twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1457000869065633802">told</a> host Tiffany Cross that the white working class wants to murder black people. “What the Democrats&#8217; theory of the case is, is that the white non-college-educated voter cares about things like kitchen table issues like infrastructure and pipes and how many gallons of milk you can put on the table,” he told MSNBC viewers. “I contend that what they care about is using their guns on black people and getting away with it. That&#8217;s what they want. That&#8217;s what they actually are in it for.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Here&#39;s me making the connecting the dots from the Ahmaud Abery lynching to the Democratic election losses. <a href="https://t.co/NQdRPZFFdb">https://t.co/NQdRPZFFdb</a>
&mdash; Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1457000869065633802?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 6, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Ungar-Sargon’s unexpected critique usually extends to CNN. Late last month, she <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k38RUceuS9A">told</a> Megyn Kelly that Don Lemon used “moral panic about race to hide the … abandonment of the working class by both sides” of the political spectrum.
She added that “the real difference between CNN and Fox is really about class. It’s not even about politics as much or about polarization. It’s about the fact that the Fox News audience that’s pictured by … Fox News as a channel is a working-class person, as opposed to at the liberal outlets, where they are picturing an increasingly elite, educated audience.”
“In 2012, only 25% of CNN’s viewership had a college degree, which is on a par with Fox. Now, it’s about 50%,” she added. “So, something they were doing was signaling to working-class viewers — to liberal, working-class viewers — this is no longer a channel for you.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="How Woke Media Turns Off Working Class Viewers, with Batya Ungar-Sargon | The Megyn Kelly Show" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k38RUceuS9A?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Ungar-Sargon’s appearance went viral on Twitter and garnered positive reviews from media critics. Glenn Greenwald <a href="https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1457408623068553216">tweeted</a>, “Kudos to @brianstelter for airing this smart, incisive critique of the fundamental rot of CNN/MSBNC/liberal-corporate media discourse.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Kudos to <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brianstelter</a> for airing this smart, incisive critique of the fundamental rot of CNN/MSBNC/liberal-corporate media discourse: <a href="https://t.co/KztN9De3TY">https://t.co/KztN9De3TY</a>
&mdash; Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) <a href="https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1457408623068553216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

New York Times

Legacy Media ‘Criminalizing The Views Of Working Class Americans’: Author

Critical Race Theory

CNN’s Brian Stelter dedicated his Halloween monologue to predicting a dark, dystopian future in which insults from Fox News personalities and Republican politicians lead to “bombs in newsrooms” of honest news outlets, like CNN. The only thing that can prevent a full-blown civil war, Stelter said, is the power of genuine “news sources” like CNN.
His monologue contributed to the growing number of recent incidents in which the legacy media have treated conservatives, or all Trump voters, as potential domestic terrorists.
Stelter opened Sunday’s “Reliable Sources” by scoping out the allegedly violence-strewn path between now and the 2024 presidential election. “So much of what might happen in the next three years is sadly predictable,” he said.
He then broke up his monologue into three blocks, “Imagine It’s” 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Next year, “Right-wing media keeps pummeling President Biden, weakening him, calling him a tyrant one minute and senile the next,” Stelter <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1454839184863150086">said</a>.
“Donald Trump is in complete control of the GOP,” and “the agenda is revenge,” he said. “Establishment GOP figures have to play along in order to keep their jobs,” wary of “enforcers&#8221; like Sean Hannity, Stelter’s onetime friend.
“In the Right’s media echo chamber, growing ever more extreme, the words ‘Democrats’ and ‘criminals’ are conflated constantly, so the other side loses legitimacy bit, by bit, by bit,” he continued. “Fear propelled by the likes of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who bring up things like caravans right at key moments during the election … in 2022 helps the GOP regain control of the House. Members of the January 6 sedition caucus are now in control of the body that completes the Electoral College process.”
“And most people, by the end of 2022, have a sinking feeling that more riots are ahead,” Stelter fretted.
He then took aim at the independence of social media. “New fan groups organize in private Facebook groups. They call themselves the Trumpets. They pledge to share only real news about the candidate to get around the CNNs of the world. Of course, their real news is largely misinformation,” Stelter said, reassuring his viewers.
“Columnists who point out that Trump is a wannabe autocrat are insulted by Fox stars, triggering hate campaigns against them,” Stelter said.
He did not specify why the American people should assume that former President Donald Trump is an aspiring dictator nor clarify how reporters should square that starting point with their obligation to provide unbiased news coverage.
“Reporters who try to counter Trump’s lies are jeered and smeared more than ever before. His verbal attacks against the media are so pervasive now that physical violence erupts more often: beatings at rallies, bombs in newsrooms,” he said. He bizarrely minimized the threat, saying, “The bombs don’t explode, but that isn’t the point. Fear is the point: silence through force.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
To cover the daily assault on democracy, maybe we should map out the road ahead. Imagine what could happen in 2022, 2023, 2024&#8230; <a href="https://t.co/AQZoscZya2">pic.twitter.com/AQZoscZya2</a>
&mdash; Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1454839184863150086?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Stelter then warned that, in 2023, a growing number of conservative websites will “spin the news in Trump’s favor. They start to publish explicit enemies lists, and in the comments sections of the websites, people dream up what they’ll do if Trump is denied power, which weapons they’ll use, who they’ll hurt.”
Stelter then ascribed a racial motivation to conservatives’ actions. “Every day some random, hyper-local story about a migrant from Haiti or a refugee from Afghanistan is blown out of proportion into some doomsday, international story about the death of white America’s way of life.  That is all you hear about on right-wing radio,” he said, painting a fantasy world picture unrelated to the content of actual talk radio. “It’s as if America has been swallowed up by QAnon conspiracy theories.”
Finally, Stelter introduced his favorite bogeyman: Fox News. In 2024, “Fox responds by running even further to the Right, quadrupling down on red meat opinion over news. There will be no repeat of the Arizona race call. Telling the truth is too risky,” he said.
“Election boards are, to borrow a word, rigged,” Stelter said. That conflicts with his expressed view in 2016, when he <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/hannity-responds-to-stelter-criticism-on-twitter-226773">said</a>, “It&#8217;s dangerous for a talk show host to promote conspiracy theories about election-rigging.&#8221;
Back in Stelter’s Manichean fantasy world, “The country is on pins and needles. Landlords board up downtown windows. And the looting starts, shooting starts.”
“We know what Trump will do, so what will the rest of us do?” Stelter asked. “That’s the story for the American media for the next three years.”
The theme is a favorite of Stelter’s: Donald Trump is a totalitarian-in-waiting; he single-handedly controls every right-of-center politician and news outlet; and only courageous, embattled journalists like Brian Stelter can maintain democracy against rampaging Republican rioters.
While Stelter noted that some of these events, such as looting and boarded-up windows in advance of a presidential election, have occurred in the past, he did not mention that they were done to guard against the widely anticipated explosions of violence by Democrats in the event of  President Trump’s reelection.
There was no national campaign of looting, or shooting, by Republicans following President Donald Trump’s ouster from office.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Red-State Dawn? Brian Stelter Imagines How Anti-CNN ‘Insults’ Lead To ‘Shooting’ In 2024

The legacy media spent the weekend continually conflating criticism of the Biden administration with terrorist propaganda. In three days of nearly identically worded attacks, CNN and MSNBC likened FNC programming to ISIS recruiting films, accused 90-year-old Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch of being a “threat to democracy,” and mused about revoking the Australian native’s U.S. citizenship.
The personal assaults on the Murdoch family emanated from MSNBC’s Joy Reid, as well as CNN’s Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter.
Reid began the media pressure campaign by first targeting FNC, comparing Tucker Carlson’s Fox Nation programming to ISIS propaganda videos. “I used to watch, for my job, those ISIS little mini-films they would make to try to recruit young [involuntarily celibate males] to join ISIS. They would have the same sort of live action, try to incite, try to excite, like, young men kind of vibe that Tucker is creating in his trailer,” she said on Friday’s episode of “The ReidOut.”
“Arguably the greatest threat to our democracy continues in its quest to rot this country out from the outside,” she said. “No, no, not the Republican Party this time. I’m talking about Fox News.”
She then targeted the network’s owners, Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lachlan. “The Murdochs are undermining democracy here and around the world,” said Reid. “The Murdoch empire is just injecting anti-democratic propaganda straight into the veins of millions [of] people, night after night.”
“This is worse than <a href="https://therightswriter.com/2010/12/you-pay-1-5-million-for-public-radio-to-air-al-jazeera-news/">Al-Jazeera after 9/11</a>, what FOX News is,” agreed her guest, Dean Obeidallah. Al-Jazeera regularly aired videos produced by al Qaeda, including messages produced by the terrorist group&#8217;s founder, Osama bin Laden.
Reid then classified the 90-year-old Australian Rupert Murdoch as an incipient terrorist threat, approvingly reading a <a href="https://twitter.com/stuartpstevens/status/1453739491059961857">tweet</a> from an advisor to the scandal-plagued Lincoln Project: “If Rupert Murdoch were applying for American citizenship today, there would be ample evidence to classify him as a domestic threat and deny citizenship. He’s a dangerous man who should be treated as the anti-democratic propagandist he is.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
If Rupert Murdoch were applying for American citizenship today, there would be ample evidence to classify him as a domestic threat and deny citizenship. He’s a dangerous man who should be treated as the anti-democratic propagandist he is. <a href="https://t.co/o7Lx529X7u">https://t.co/o7Lx529X7u</a>
&mdash; Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens) <a href="https://twitter.com/stuartpstevens/status/1453739491059961857?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“We can’t take his citizenship away,” Obeidallah said mournfully. “I almost wish there was a way, but you can’t do it. I think you can only counter” his influence.
Reid and Obeidallah focused their ire on a new special which Carlson produced for Fox News’ streaming platform, Fox Nation, titled “Patriot Purge.” The documentary contends that the Left accuses its critics of terrorism so that it can impose legal sanctions against them.
Reid and her guests continued to attack Murdoch as spreading foreign propaganda. “What Murdoch has delivered, largely through FOX News in the United States, is exactly what Vladimir Putin wanted to achieve with his disinformation campaigns, turning one part of America against another,” said Reid, apparently unaware that the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/opinion-the-american-media-has-spread-russian-propaganda-more-effectively-than-russia-itself">greatest Russian propaganda charge</a> during the Cold War portrayed the U.S. as a systemically racist nation, much as Reid does. Dana Milbank of The Washington Post struck a more scatological tone, saying, “If Murdoch takes this once great newspaper any further down the toilet, I think we`re going to call it the Wall Street Urinal.” Obeidallah added zingers by calling Texas “an apartheid state” and nicknaming Tucker Carlson “Tucker Klansman.”
CNN followed suit the rest of the weekend. “The Murdochs and Tucker Carlson, their primetime pyromaniac, appear to be Hell-bent on dragging this country into a civil war. Jefferson Davis would be proud,” said former White House correspondent Jim Acosta on “<a href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnr/date/2021-10-30/segment/07">CNN Newsroom</a>” on Saturday afternoon.
CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter again hyperfocused on the Murdoch media dynasty on “Reliable Sources” on Sunday morning. “Are the Murdochs trying to be threats to American democracy? Is Rupert Murdoch a threat to American democracy?” Stelter asked guest Bill Carter, who replied Murdoch has “always been a destructive figure.”
The New York Times national political reporter, Astead Herndon, agreed with his fellow panelists that the threat of domestic terrorism from Fox News supporters appeared imminent.
“I think it’s a mistake for us to think of January 6 as an isolated event,” he said.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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