Unreliable Sources
CNN's days as the "most trusted name in news" are over as Malone and Licht "accelerate their little fascist project."
Here’s the dilemma.
Viewers expect CNN to deal in facts.
But facts have a liberal bias.
And CNN’s new owners Warner Bros. Discovery are under pressure from “influential shareholder” and Trump donor John Malone who wants the network to be more “centrist.”
So that means liberals must be shown the door.
And they can take their pesky facts with them.
First, Brian Stelter got fired
The host of CNN’s popular show Reliable Sources (who signed a new 4-year contract with CNN just last year) was informed on Wednesday 17 August that his show was being cancelled (despite the fact that it consistently bested MSNBC in its Sunday timeslot).
As The Daily Beast reported, the news about Stelter—who “had been an antagonist of right-wing media for much of his time at the Reliable Sources desk”—was “supposed to be announced Friday with a carefully managed story placed with NPR.”
But somehow:
The news leaked early, including—perhaps curiously—to two conservative outlets, The Daily Mail and the Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller, which were both tipped off on Thursday morning.
Meanwhile The New York Times reported that John Malone had claimed in an email to them:
That he had “nothing to do with” the cancellation of Mr. Stelter’s show. Mr. Malone said he wants “the ‘news’ portion of CNN to be more centrist, but I am not in control or directly involved.”
So the story we’re expected to believe is that right-wing billionaire and Rupert Murdoch buddy John Malone had nothing to do with the decision to fire Trump antagonist Brian Stelter, a decision that immediately got leaked to Trump-friendly media who celebrated raucously.
Now John Harwood is out, too
Watching President Biden’s speech on Thursday night, John Harwood tweeted: “Biden’s assertion that Trump and extremist Republicans pose a threat to American democracy is, undeniably, true.”
Hard to disagree with that, right?
On Friday morning Harwood said on air: “The core point (Biden) made… about a threat to democracy is true. Now that’s something that’s not easy for us as journalists to say, we’re brought up to believe that there’s two different political parties with different points of view and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them… But these are not honest disagreements. The Republican Party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue.”
By noon he was gone.
This is the same John Harwood who worked at The Wall Street Journal before joining The New York Times, then became CNBC’s Washington correspondent, moderating a 2015 GOP debate along the way, before becoming CNNs White House correspondent in February 2021.
But he’s not “centrist “enough for today’s CNN, under the leadership of Chris Licht, a man who spends his days courting Republican Senators and encouraging his on-air talent not to call Trump’s insurrection-inspiring falsehoods “The Big Lie.”
While right-wing media celebrated Harwood’s departure, Parker Molloy wrote on Twitter: “John Harwood tells the truth... and is suddenly on his way out the door. Looks like Malone and Licht are accelerating their little fascist project.”
The only positive from todays’s media news is that, as Joementum shifts to the Democrats, it may be a sign that right-wing billionaires like Malone and Murdoch are seeing the writing on the wall. They’re starting to panic that all the money they’ve invested in extremist candidates this political season could be going to waste.
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Thank you for putting John Harwood's departure in context. I was not aware of what he said on air (AKA speaking the truth) before he announced he was gone. I hope someone reports on the details of CNN terminating him (if, in fact, that's what actually happened). Until then, I imagine people like NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen and former NY Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan are shaking their heads at how truth is dying before our eyes.
It’s CNN’s loss. They’re already losing viewers. When they allow Repubs on who push conspiracy theories & lies, with nobody calling them out or fact checking in real time, they may as well call themselves FOX. Truth & facts is what used to set CNN apart. There’s already WAY TOO MUCH dis/misinfo in cable news. The majority of cable “news” is now right wing & extreme right wing. Do Malone & Licht really want CNN to be “centrist”? Not everything has “both sides”. And allowing MAGAs to LIE to viewers just makes CNN dishonest, not politically balanced. Hopefully MSNBC stays the same. Adios CNN!