During Sunday’s so-called “Reliable Sources” on CNN, the network’s engrained hatred for their far more popular competitor boiled over as senior media reporter Oliver Darcy seemed to lose his wits, lashing out at Fox Corp boss Lachlan Murdoch and accusing him of injecting poison into society. Some have suggested Darcy was asserting that Fox News was the enemy of the people.
Darcy’s hate-filled attack, was teed up by his boss and host Brian Stelter, who celebrated how the White House wasn’t doing interviews and insisted it meant there would be fewer lies floating around:
You know what's interesting, the White House declined all these interview requests today. They declined CNN and all the broadcast networks. No White House aides are out on television defending Trump. Unfortunately, that means—actually, in a good way, that means there's less disinformation. There’s less misinformation being spread to the public today, because the White House declined to give interviews.
“Although, a lot of what we saw last week was a lot of these talking points really fall apart when they entered the real world. Whereas, they still are allowed to thrive on Fox,” Darcy sneered. “And I actually kind of wonder, Lachlan Murdoch, you know, the head of Fox, how does he really look at himself in the mirror every morning knowing that that poison is his contribution to society?”
Suggesting he was being ‘honest’ in his skepticism, Darcy added: “I can't understand how he does it.”
But as Grabien Media founder Tom Elliott pointed out on Twitter, “The ‘poison’ Darcy’s referencing is reporting on Democratic efforts in 2016 to get Trump dirt from Ukraine (a topic many media outlets have covered).”
Stelter, the far-left extremist who calls Fox News “state-run media” and allows his guests to falsely claim President Trump has killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined and lets them curse out Fox News, offered up no push back; telling his underling, “That’s pretty strong, Oliver.”
“I wonder if we have to go back to real basic points, including quoting the U.S. Constitution,” Stelter opined, referencing how he explained the definition of treason on his show because Trump used it to refer to the so-called whistleblower. Meanwhile, CNN and the rest of the liberal media found Trump guilty of treason last year. Treason is punishable by the death penalty, by the way.
Shortly before that, Stelter was whining that the media needed to step up their game to defend former Vice President Joe Biden from Trump:
I notice another word that, I think, sometimes being misused is "unsubstantiated." We say things like, “uh, the President doesn't have evidence for his claims about Biden.” What we really mean is he's promoting a conspiracy theory based on a bunch of lies that are dredged up on the web. And I wonder, Oliver, if news outlets are meeting the moment well enough if we’re just saying, “he's saying this without evidence.” You know, those kind of cheat words.
Seemingly calling for indoctrination, Darcy demanded that media outlets “need[ed] to drill in their audience that this stuff is untethered from reality.”
“That this stuff comes from the internet fever swamps and the President repeats it, and that does not make it an unsubstantiated allegation necessarily. It means it’s just a distorted -- it's really poison, is the best way to describe it,” Darcy decried.
As New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz asked Stelter on Twitter, “Is this an attack on free press or not, @brianstelter? Certainly sounds like ‘enemy of the people’ rhetoric that you find so deeply concerning.”
Someone should really tell Darcy that the “internet fever swamps” was where the liberal media picked up their slander of Covington high school student Nick Sandmann when they sprinted to falsely call him a racist. CNN was still in the middle of dealing with a lawsuit stemming from their coverage of that story.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN’s Reliable Sources
October 6, 2019
11:08:26 p.m. Eastern(…)
BRIAN STELTER: Of course, the President is watching, watching, watching, is what he’s consuming and then spitting out via Twitter. And that’s that feedback loop that we’re seeing. I wonder, Masha, as the author of books, including, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, if what we are seeing here in the United States reminds you at all of state-run media in other countries. Is what we're seeing similar at this point?
MASHA GESSEN: A bit. I mean, what you see in a totalitarian country which of course this country is not and most countries are not, but what you see is a forced reality.
STELTER: A forced reality?
GESSEN: Yeah, where basically the subject of a totalitarian state is told you have had to inhabit this reality, this is the only available reality. Observable facts are not part of the thing that's available to you. And that relies on state terror.
What's amazing about Trump is that he has created this completely encapsulated reality without relying on state terror, right? It's a much softer –
STELTER: All he does is tweet insults at Mitt Romney.
GESSEN: That's not all he does, but it is a perfectly encapsulated universe. And I think, all of us are living in a state of this incredible anxiety and have been for about two and a half years, where on the one hand we have what is observable to us as fact, and on the other hand we have coming at us through the tweets, through Fox News, even if you’re not watching it you’re sort of getting it through osmosis. And there’s a king of temptation there. Right? To sort of – you can just move in, you could live in that space and be un-conflicted. And I wouldn’t underestimate the force of that.
(…)
11:18:38 a.m. Eastern
STELTER: I notice another word that, I think, sometimes being misused is "unsubstantiated." We say things like, “uh, the President doesn't have evidence for his claims about Biden.” What we really mean is he's promoting a conspiracy theory based on a bunch of lies that are dredged up on the web. And I wonder, Oliver, if news outlets are meeting the moment well enough if we’re just saying, “he's saying this without evidence.” You know, those kind of cheat words.
OLIVER DARCY: They need to drill in their audience that this stuff is untethered from reality. That this stuff comes from the internet fever swamps and the President repeats it, and that does not make it an unsubstantiated allegation necessarily. It means it’s just a distorted -- it's really poison, is the best way to describe it.
STELTER: You know what's interesting, the White House declined all these interview requests today. They declined CNN and all the broadcast networks. No White House aides are out on television defending Trump. Unfortunately, that means—actually, in a good way, that means there's less disinformation. There’s less misinformation being spread to the public today, because the White House declined to give interviews. What a sad state of affairs that the White House giving interviews means there’s going to be more misinformation now in the world.
DARCY: Although, lot of what we saw last week was a lot of these talking points really fall apart when they entered the real world. Whereas, they still are allowed to thrive on Fox. And you know, you just played that clip where people were talking about coups and civil wars, it's really disturbing stuff. And I actually kind of wonder, Lachlan Murdoch, you know, the head of Fox, how does he really look at himself in the mirror every morning knowing that that poison is his contribution to society? Honestly—
STELTER: That’s pretty strong, Oliver.
DARCY: I can't understand how he does it.
STELTER: I wonder if we have to go back to real basic points, including quoting the U.S. Constitution, quoting the definition of coup. If we’re going to be dealing with these lies out there in the public domain. We’ve got to get back to basics and explain what is an impeachment process? How is it legally defined in the Constitution?
(…)
