On top of all the bad Chris Cuomo news happening at CNN over the last few weeks, things got even worse for the network over the weekend when news broke New Day producer John Griffin was arrested for allegedly attempting to convince parents to allow him to have unlawful sex with their underage daughters. But being the good company man he was, CNN’s Brian Stelter completely ignored the network’s latest scandal and instead chose to lash out at Fox News and the political right.
According to Griffin, via the federal indictment, a “woman is a woman regardless of her age” and they needed to be “properly trained” by him in how to have sex. But Stelter thought it was more important to tout Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace leaving the network to go work at CNN+, the network’s streaming service.
“This is a shock to the TV news business,” Stelter declared. “Chris Wallace is one of the, you know, journalists that is at Fox who stands out like a sore thumb because the network has become more and more radicalized both in the Trump years and now in the Biden years.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut, where the arrest was made, issued a statement detailing how the CNN producer paid $3,000 to fly a mother and her 9-year-old daughter to have sex with him. Instead of covering that, Stelter commiserated with New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen about how the media needed to be more rabid in railing against Republicans:
STELTER: If you could set the table with a question about the press and its role in covering politics right now. What would the question be that you would want to present?
ROSEN: Well, the way the press traditionally covers politics is by presuming the existence of two political parties that resemble each other but have different ideologies. What happens when you have two parties that increasingly don't resemble each other and one of them is going off in an anti-democratic direction?
“And let's not beat around the bush. You're talking about Republican extremism,” Stelter clarified for his small audience.
A few moments later, Rosen went off about how the media needed to create “some sort of urgency index” to measure “how far away from the disaster of a collapsed democracy” was due to Republicans. “Are we making progress towards that collapse? Or are things getting marginally better? We need some way of locating where we are in political space as what's called democratic backsliding progresses,” he said.
Towards the end of the show, instead of discussing how Griffin brags on his LinkedIn account about how he’s worked “shoulder-to-shoulder with lead anchor Chris Cuomo,” who was fired for his own sexual misconduct scandal, Stelter and CNN commentator S.E. Cupp defended the liberal media’s aid to Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax.
According to Cupp, there was only “a little truth” to the criticism but suggested it ultimately goes “too far.” And despite the fact Smollett’s story was ridiculous from the start (i.e. braving -16 degree cold for a Subway sandwich and the attackers claiming Chicago was “MAGA country”), she suggested: “You'd really have to suspend disbelief to think in the immediate that this was a lie.”
This is CNN.
Brian Stelter’s silence of the CNN’s pedophile problem was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Norton Antivirus and Land Rover. Their contact information is linked so you can tell them about the biased news they fund.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN’s Reliable Sources
December 12, 2021
11:01:54 a.m. Eastern(…)
BRIAN STELTER: This is a shock to the TV news business. Chris Wallace is one of the, you know, journalists that is at Fox who stands out like a sore thumb because the network has become more and more radicalized both in the Trump years and now in the Biden years.
(…)
11:20:38 a.m. Eastern
STELTER: If you could set the table with a question about the press and its role in covering politics right now. What would the question be that you would want to present?
JAY ROSEN: Well, the way the press traditionally covers politics is by presuming the existence of two political parties that resemble each other but have different ideologies. What happens when you have two parties that increasingly don't resemble each other and one of them is going off in an anti-democratic direction?
I think a lot of the routines and assumptions of political journalism just collapse at that point when you have two radically different parties. And that to me is probably the biggest conceptual as well as practical problem in political journalism today.
STELTER: And let's not beat around the bush. You're talking about Republican extremism…
(…)
11:23:58 a.m. Eastern
ROSEN: Final thing that I would recommend is some sort of urgency index, by which I mean we have to know how far away from the disaster of a collapsed democracy are we? Are we making progress towards that collapse? Or are things getting marginally better? We need some way of locating where we are in political space as what's called democratic backsliding progresses.
(…)
11:56:31 a.m. Eastern
STELTER: So, many on Fox saying the Jussie Smollett verdict is also a guilty verdict for the media. (…) S.E., the narrative – pretty clear here. The media is complicit in pushing the hate crime narrative and the media is guilty as well. How true is that?
S.E. CUPP: Well, there's a little truth in it. As usual, I think Laura and Fox go too far. But listen, t I think, when this story broke – you have to remember in context – hate crimes were on the rise.
And I think what a lot of journalists did was – they wanted to be activists on this story. And you know, they got a little too far ahead. They stopped calling the crime “alleged” pretty quickly. I don't think we asked enough questions initially.
But you also have to remember, I mean, according to researchers, less than one percent of hate crimes are faked, are not real. I mean, you'd really have to suspend disbelief to think in the immediate that this was a lie. Of course, as information and details came out, it became clear that the story didn't make any sense.
But yeah, I think any time journalists want to be activists, they run the risk of telling the wrong story.
STELTER: Right. Skepticism, we've got to keep applying skepticism.
(…)
