Tag Archives: Brian Stelter

The “Horrors” Of Free Speech

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Just when you thought you had heard everything…. On Wednesday, The Daily Caller posted an article that illustrates how far the mainstream media has wandered from the concept of informing the American people.

The article reports:

NBC’s Tom Costello worried Tuesday that Daily Caller co-founder and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson will not be policed for his speech on his new show.

Carlson announced Tuesday that his show will air exclusively on Twitter going forward.

“As of tonight, there aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech,” Carlson said in his announcement video. “The last big one remaining in the world, the only one, is Twitter, where we are now. Twitter has long served as the place where our national conversation incubates and develops. Twitter is not a partisan site – everybody’s allowed here, and we think that’s a good thing.”

Carlson said his show will air “soon.”

Costello grew animated over the news during Tuesday night’s segment of “Hallie Jackson NOW.”

“Okay, well listen, Twitter was already under fire for misinformation, disinformation, all-out lies, anti-Semitism [and] racism before Elon Musk took over, and now it’s gotten kind of crazy — seemingly unmoored, if you will. Will anybody be able to police what Carlson says, or is this the point? It’s just a free for all?” he wondered.

Twitter is a bit of a free-for-all right now, but that is good. It provides readers with a lot of information that they can evaluate. The interesting part of the article was former CNN host Brian Stelter stating that Tucker Carlson was a drag on Fox News’ profits. Well, that’s an interesting comment. Despite having the second most-watched show on Cable TV in 2022, Tucker Carlson’s show was not very profitable. Why? Because of a massive email and calling campaign by the political left threatening to boycott Tucker Carlson’s advertisers. The campaign was successful, and Tucker Carlson lost his first-tier advertisers. So what Brian Stelter said was true, but he forgot to mention the reason behind it.

 

The Double Standard Among Us

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The Daily Wire recently posted an article sharing some of their observations regarding the possible takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk.

The article reports:

When Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter and make it a private company, Twitter’s board of directors responded with a poison pill — and the legacy media responded with a poison pen.

Journalists have contended that Musk’s bid to loosen the social media platform’s speech restrictions represent a threat to the First Amendment, threaten to give billionaires too much control over the media, or even presage the fall of our republic into a totalitarian oligarchy. These unduly emotional responses reveal that the legacy media’s fear is not so much Musk as it is free speech — and losing their ability to create the national narrative.

It really is all about control.

The article notes:

CNN’s Brian Stelter seemed to criticize the capitalist system of private media ownership. “There is also a lot of folks out there saying it’s troubling enough that private companies control these key communication platforms around the world, maybe it’s even worse to have the world’s richest person trying to buy one and take it private,” he said on April 14. In the same vein, and on the same day, Business Insider ran a story titled “Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter represents a chilling new threat: billionaire trolls taking over social media.”

But billionaire ownership of the media is hardly new. And judging by their position on the payroll, it seems not to leave journalists ill at ease. To take but a few examples:

Even CNN founder Ted Turner still has a net worth of $2.3 billion, after being “squeezed out” of his own company many years ago.

If billionaire status does not actually offend the journalistic Left, what does? Perhaps Musk’s political donations to some Republicans, including George W. Bush, Kevin McCarthy, Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio? Possibly, but many businessmen (including our former president) have donated to politicians of both parties — and self-described centrist Musk is no exception.

It’s okay to be a millionaire who owns a news outlet if you are a liberal. It’s required that if you are a corporation that you pay more in taxes unless you are a liberal (see Disney). The double standard lives among us.

Information Or Disinformation?

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On Sunday, The Daily Caller posted an article about a recent conference held at the University of Chicago centered on “disinformation.”

The article reports:

The university hosted a “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference featuring big names like CNN’s Brian Stelter, The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg, and former President Barack Obama. The conference was largely partisan with the exception of the token conservative, Jonah Goldberg.

Freshman Daniel Schmidt questioned The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum about Hunter Biden’s laptop, to which the left-leaning journalist quickly dismissed the question.

“So, in 2020, you wrote ‘those outside the Fox News bubble do not, of course, need to learn any of the stuff about Hunter Biden,’ referring to his laptop, of course,” Schmidt began. “A poll later found out that if voters knew about the contents of the laptop, 16% of Joe Biden voters would’ve acted differently. Of course, we know a few weeks ago The New York Times confirmed that the content is real.”

“Do you think the media acted inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation and what can we learn from that in ensuring that what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation and not reality?” he continued.

Applebaum quickly moved to dismiss the legitimate question.

“My problem with Hunter Biden’s laptop I think is totally irrelevant,” she said. “I mean, it’s not whether it’s disinformation or, I mean, I didn’t think that Hunter Biden’s business relationships have anything to do with who should be president of the United States, so I don’t find it to be interesting, that would be my problem with that as a main news story.”

It really isn’t irrelevant when a candidate for a major office has a son who is possibly involved in illegal activities and could be subject to blackmail. Also, why do they keep calling America a democracy–it’s a republic!

The article also highlights another question asked by someone who obviously wasn’t buying into the political agenda of the conference:

Freshman Christopher Phillips then asked CNN’s Stelter about his outlet’s role in pushing disinformation, saying “you’ve all spoken extensively about Fox News being a purveyor of disinformation, but CNN is right up there with them.”

Phillips then noted how CNN “pushed the Russian Collusion hoax, they pushed the Jussie Smollett hoax, they smeared Justice Kavanaugh as a rapist and they also smeared Nick Sandmann as a white supremacist and, yes, they dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop as pure Russian disinformation.”

Stelter claimed Phillips was “describing a different channel than the one I watch” but he understands “it is a popular right-wing narrative about CNN.”

I wonder if outsiders will be invited to the next disinformation conference?

This Is Frightening

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Newsmax reported yesterday that CNN is demanding that cable operators drop Newsmax.

The article reports:

Oliver Darcy, CNN’s leftwing media critic, has been demanding cable operators drop Newsmax, which is currently carried by every major system in the nation. Newsmax is also streamed free by most OTT platforms and devices.

In a CNN column in early January, Darcy falsely claimed conservative media caused the protests at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“After all, it was the very lies that Fox, Newsmax, and OAN spread that helped prime President Trump’s supporters into not believing the truth: That he lost an honest and fair election,” Darcy wrote.

Darcy’s demands have been echoed on CNN’s shows, including their Sunday media show “Reliable Sources” hosted by liberal media analyst Brian Stelter.

On this week’s Sunday show, Stelter’s guests focused on deplatforming Newsmax.

Previously, CNN had led efforts to deplatform President Donald Trump from Twitter.

“We are going to have to figure out the OANN and Newsmax problem,” Alex Stamos, a former Facebook chief security officer, told CNN’s Stelter. “These companies have freedom of speech, but I’m not sure we need Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and such bringing them into tens of millions of homes.”

The article concludes:

In a statement released Sunday, Newsmax said, contrary to Darcy’s and Stamos’ claims, Newsmax never denied the election results.

The network called all contested states for Biden as they were certified and accepted him as president-elect Dec. 14, after the meeting of the Electoral College.

Newsmax also noted, while it justifiably covered the president’s allegations about the election, and interviewed his lawyers and supporters – as did Fox News and Fox Business News, it never said all allegations were true.

The network did note, after years of CNN falsely claiming the Steele Dossier was valid and the Russian collusion claim against Trump was credible, it was never held accountable for its misreporting. Newsmax never called for CNN to be shut down.

Hang on to your hats. The people about to come into power have very little respect for free speech.