Five Grievous SINS Brian Stelter Should Confess Before Rejoining CNN

Tim Graham
September 4th, 2024 12:00 PM

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Amid the less-than-shocking news that post-Chris Licht CNN is bringing Brian Stelter back as "Chief Media Analyst," we at NewsBusters insist that the sequel Stelter 2: Electric Boogaloo be accompanied by some small measure of repentance. In his first "Reliable" newsletter of his second term, Stelter wrote "[t]he media industry has matured, CNN has evolved, and I have changed a lot since I signed off two years ago."

Does anyone expect a different Stelter? If he's "changed a lot," he should confess all of the remarkable arrogance that made him the poster boy of the philosophy that leftist tilt is mandatory, and at the same time, crusading anti-Trump journalists are somehow not on "one side of the aisle." Here's a small list. Yes, it could on a long, long time....

1. The Steele Dossier of Russian Disinformation

CNN and the rest of the leftist press began the Trump presidency by trying to claim that a dossier written by former British spy Christopher Steele for the firm Fusion GPS (and funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign) was going to end Trump's term prematurely. Steele claimed Trump colluded with the highest levels of the Russian government to steal the election away from the Clintons. Stelter wrongly claimed "much" of the dossier was verified. It wasn't. 

 

2. Fraudster Michael Avenatti, a Plausible Presidential Candidate?

As CNN and MSNBC relentlessly granted hours of free air time to ambulance-chasing attorney Michael Avenatti and his porn-star client Stormy Daniels, Stelter bizarrely suggested that just because Avenatti's incessant presence on cable news made him a plausible presidential contender. Avenatti went to jail in 2020, so it should be easy for Stelter to confess his enthusiasm was hilariously overwrought.

 

 

“I don’t know if it’s a good thing that star power and TV savvy is required for the job, but I think it is. And by the way, I think President Obama also had a lot of TV star power and that helped him pre-Trump. But Trump is more evidence of this. And looking ahead to 2020, one reason why I’m taking you seriously as a contender is because of your presence on cable news.”
— Host Brian Stelter to Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti on CNN’s Reliable Sources, September 16, 2018.

 

3. New York Post's Hunter Biden's Laptop Story 'Does Not Add Up'

On October 18, 2020, Stelter went into "disinformation" mode against the New York Post scoops on Hunter Biden's laptop. Like many pro-Biden journalists, the didn't trust any of this:

The Post claimed that the e- mails were found on a laptop computer that was brought to a repair shop in Delaware in the spring of 2019. And a shop employee saw the e- mails and then was worried about getting in trouble or getting in danger and he made copies of them. There's a lot about the story that does not add up. And the employee has not helped matters. He has contradicted himself in interviews with reporters. And I mean, for all we know, these emails are made up or maybe some are real, and others are fakes. We don't know. But we do know that this is a classic example of the right-wing media machine. I get pretty fired up about how this works because, look, I mean, if the New York Post tells you your mom loves you, you should check it out. We are not talking about fully reliable sources here.

 

4. Trump Will Kill More People Than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao??

The most aggressive misinformation about Trump may have come in a 2019 segment psychoanalyzing Trump with leftist experts who've never met him. Dr. Allen Frances claimed "calling Trump crazy hides the fact that we're crazy for having elected him and even crazier for allowing his crazy policies to persist. Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were."

Stelter did absolutely no "fact checking in real time" for that ridiculous nonsense. He later claimed he didn't hear it and moved on to talking about "name-calling."

 

 

5. Ridiculous Denials Like "We're Not Anti-Trump, We're Pro-Truth" 

The most frustrating lie emanating from Stelter and his ilk has been the notion that "we're not on one side," as he claimed to Kellyanne Conway. He has claimed "we're not anti-Trump, we're pro-truth." Obviously, Stelter has championed a lot of misinformation while claiming to be "pro-truth." Someone who put truth first wouldn't always end up on the Trump Must Go hard line on every controversy.

Here is a quick montage of Stelter’s ludicrousness by NewsBusters senior research analyst Bill D’Agostino: 

 

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