Carlson forgot to mention that he served as a major source for Brian Stelter’s Hoax book.
Carlson put up a mock RIP graphic for Brian Stelter’s CNN career (His Reliable Sources show was canceled last week and Stelter exited the network after today’s show). Stelter has long been a Fox News punching bag, even though Reliable Sources was only on the air once a week.
In a June, 2021 New York Times column, Ben Smith wrote that “one of Washington’s open secrets” is that Tucker Carlson “spends his time when he’s not denouncing the liberal media trading gossip with them.” Smith cited Stelter as an example:
Brian Stelter, the host of the CNN program “Reliable Sources,” told me that “you can see Tucker’s fingerprints all over the hardcover” edition of his 2020 book “Hoax,” which excoriates Fox News for amplifying Mr. Trump’s falsehoods. He said that he “couldn’t stomach” talking to Mr. Carlson, who has grown ever more hard-line, for the updated paperback version that was just released.
In a Washington Post column Erik Wemple pretty much confirmed that Carlson served as a source for Stelter. Wemple summed up Carlson's charlatanry nicely:
In March 2019, Carlson called Stelter a “eunuch” on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” He also sent a dozen jelly Dunkin’ donuts to the CNN host, a puerile ploy that Stelter interpreted in “Hoax” as a “fat-shaming attempt.” The possibility that Carlson was whispering background tidbits to Stelter while publicly mistreating him says little about “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that we don’t already know: It’s a sham dedicated to hoodwinking its most dedicated viewers.
You can see that hoodwinking below, from the August 19, 2022 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
His podcast can probably be listened to online or on a smart phone.
Firefox: I share your disappointment with regard to that exchange between Jim Acosta and Chad Wolf (couldn’t watch all the way to the end) but I learned long ago that perfection is not a reasonable expectation. Until very recently, he’d been one of my favourites. My guess is that he got “the memo” asking (an euphemism) him to tone it down. Seems that Brian Stelter had three years to go on his contract when he was let go without even a month’s notice (is that even legal in the USA?). His last show was one of his best and I intend to find a way to listen to his podcast.
While I regret CNN’s hard-right shift very deeply I feel it would be unjust to blame journalists and staff, even (particularly?) those who had become accustomed to telling it as it is. I have nothing good to say about the owners and the top management. This would be time for wealthy folks with a social conscience to step up and do what Ted Turner did back in the day.
I guess I’m going to have (finally) to learn how to do this thing called “streaming” in order to gain access to alternative news sources.
My cable provider recently added a channel called TRT world (Turkiye Radio and Television). Although the coverage of anything Turkish is clearly pro-Erdogan propaganda, their stories on other countries aren’t bad. A great feature is that guests aren’t expected to speak in sound bites; they are given the time to place their comments in context (beginning, middle and end). I admit that some guests (mostly rabid RWingers) abuse of this liberty to recite their lists of disconnected, fact-free talking points (which the hosts are wont to point out to my delight).
As an aside, I must express my total love of Bemused. Without her unique perspective and insight, the NewsHounds site would be so much the poorer. Long may she bless us with her wit and wisdom!
Bemused, I like Jim Acosta’s unflappability, but I think he acquitted himself rather disappointingly in an interview yesterday with Trump minion Chad Wolf. In my view Acosta should have better anticipated Wolf’s answers and been better prepared to debunk some of them. For example, Wolf said Trump “repeatedly” told marchers to be peaceful on Jan. 6 when in fact Trump at the rally mentioned “peace” only once, which, as the Jan 6 committee has revealed, was a word others had put into his mouth and which literally didn’t apply to those Trump knew were already threatening the Capitol.
I fear that all that will change with the new owners who seem rather more interested in $$$$ than journalism. I’d already sensed that something was up when Brianna Keilar (sp?) was shifted from prime time to early morning, That girl used to be a breath of fresh air, much like Kate Balduan who is no longer the witty, savvy pixie I’d come to adore in 2016. I’ve read somewhere that both may have wanted to spend more time with their families but that doesn’t help me deal with the loss of their company.
I fully expect to see other professional hosts like Jim Acosta to be shifted or disappear. That’s a real pity because CNN had been on its way to returning to the early days when it had earned a reputation for truth-telling, not being “centrist”, whatever that means. Truth is not a LW or RW thing, it’s facts and – in our day – those facts do seem to be more often used by the LW. A “centrist” CNN will be all about false equivalences. Pity.
I’m really, really sorry that Reliable Sources has been taken down, after 30 years of trying to understand what ticks in the profession of journalism. It’s one of the very few CNN programmes I made sure to watch every Sunday. Unlike Smerconish, who is often despairingly irrelevant, Stelter’s show alays dealt with what was happening at the moment. And he had guests who believed in the “ethics” of journalism.
By dumping a serious show that placed the media under a microscope, the new owners of CNN are telling me they are not particularly interested in promoting truth-seeking. What they really, really want to do is steal ratings/money away from others by taking away some of ther thunder. I saw one pundit say the new owners want CNN to be more “centrist”. That word allows me to fear that each and every reprehensible act by the RW will be compared to a similar but insignificant failing on the part of the LW.
It’s only a matter of time for any reference to Trump’s willful mishandling of official documents (classified or not) to be “balanced” by raising yet again the matter of Hillary’s emails (without mentioning that Colin Powell did the same) and never but never even mentioning that Secret Service wiped all the texts on official phones shortly after Jan6. Whatabout-ism will become the underlying principle of CNN reporting and I will return to calling them Fox-Lite as I did during the period running up to Trump’s election.