David Rutz at the Washington Free Beacon took the time to confirm what everyone conservative could suspect: CNN's Media Unit obsesses over conservative or "far-right" media, and defends the left-wing press as somehow non-ideological.
Over a six-month span from Jan. 22 to July 21, the media newsletter published by Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy mentioned "right-wing" or "far-right" media, personalities, or elements 172 times, while it mentioned "left-wing" or "far-left" just 8 times, a ratio of 21.5 to 1. It mentioned "conservative news" or "conservative media" 40 times, but mentioned "liberal news" or "liberal media" only 4 times in that span.
Stelter's Sunday CNN program Reliable Sources similarly skewed toward covering the right, with 50 combined mentions of "right-wing" and "far-right" in that span, as opposed to just three mentions of "left-wing" and "far left." It mentioned "conservative news" or "conservative media" eight times, but made 3 mentions of "liberal news" or "liberal media," according to a Kinetiq media search....
Even when Stelter or Darcy do mention the "left," it often is in the context of criticizing the right. Two of the mentions of "liberal media" came when Stelter quoted Sen. Chris Murphy's (D., Conn.) interview on Feb. 2 with the New York Times, in which the senator said conservatives view the press as a threat to the country. Stelter mentioned Murphy's remark both on his show that day and in his nightly newsletter.
The only mention of "far-left" in the newsletter was a quote on April 1 from Sean Hannity in which the Fox News host referred to Recode cofounder Kara Swisher as a "far-left media mob maniac."
Stelter defended this result by telling Rutz that "Right-wing media plays an outsized role in our politics and society. It is the most important story on the media beat right now."
That's preposterous. Fox News is an outlier in a sea of Democrat-enabling media, but that makes them "outsized" only in the sense that there's any pushback on a tremendously hostile media establishment. The Left seems outraged that anyone dares to define "news" differently than they do, and refuses to bury stories or narratives they want buried.
Darcy also defended their approach. "The president of the United States watches large volumes of right-wing media, hires people from right-wing media, and seeks out the advice of personalities in right-wing media," he argued. "Ignoring this—or covering it through a bothsidesism lens—would be doing a disservice to our audience."
Obviously, the CNN audience defines "service" as defeating the conservatives. Opposing "bothsidesism" is another way of proclaiming only the liberal side has the "truth" or the "facts" or the virtues.
Rutz was kind enough to ask me for a quote. I told him "Stelter’s Sunday shows are much more obsessed with trashing Trump than evaluating journalism. Any outlet that in any way defends or aids Trump is the opposite of journalism, and anti-Trump journalists are doing the only work that real journalists do. CNN’s obsession with taking apart Fox News isn’t just attacking a conservative competitor. Stelter paints Fox as unofficially Trump-owned."
And what are all the non-Fox outlets? No politician could count them as very friendly territory? They know better than that.
