The University of Chicago recently held a conference on “disinformation” in media, and laughably, it included some of the chief purveyors of such in the news. That included CNN’s Brian Stelter, who spent his segment railing against Fox News, essentially accusing the network of being a threat to democracy.
But as RedState reported, a man named Christopher Phillips of the Chicago Thinker stood up and pressed Stelter on his own network’s tattered reputation as a reliable source of information. Some examples he provided were CNN’s dismissal of Hunter Biden’s laptop, its defamation of Nick Sandmann, and its obsession with the Russian collusion hoax.
In response, Stelter decided to…say that CNN helped an injured Fox News cameraman in Ukraine? Yeah, I didn’t get it either, but I guess when you’ve got no good answer, you just start stammering.
On Friday evening, Phillips appeared on Tucker Carlson where he proceeded to embarrass Stelter again. In doing so, I think he brought up the key point when dealing with these liberal news networks.
I’m going to get to what Phillips said in a moment, but first, can we just give credit to the guy who writes the chyrons for Tucker’s show? Over the course of a few minutes, we see Creepy Stelter: Pointing out CNN Disinformation Is a “Right-Wing Narrative” and Groveling Eunuch: Student Confronts Stelter About CNN Disinformation. You have to respect that dude’s game, and he’s made Tucker’s already dry sense of humor even funnier.
Moving on, though; if you listen to the three-minute exchange, there’s one thing that Phillips says that stands out to me, and that’s the lack of contrition at CNN. It’d be one thing if the leftwing radicals there came out and said “yeah, we’ve made some mistakes, but we do our best to correct them.” Instead, they just continually double down, with Stelter being one of the worst at leaning into absurdity. Worse, the hosts on the network attempt to claim the moral high ground on the decimation of information, when they are some of the worst offenders of spreading fake stories — not by mistake, but in order to push a partisan narrative.
Yet, that could all be changing very soon. CNN is under new ownership, and the network’s now-largest shareholder is not a fan of Stelter’s schtick. In fact, John Malone went so far as to call the supposed media journalist a “cancer” and noted he hosts a “failing show.” One wouldn’t imagine that qualifies as an endorsement at this point, and Malone has a history of making his investments pay off. As it stands, CNN continues to languish following the mess Jeff Zucker left behind.
So while Stelter gets to go to “disinformation” conferences and throw barbs at Fox News, the right-leaning network may end up with the last laugh in the end. No one will shed a tear in that event.