I’m glad to see Brian Stelter back at CNN, where he now has the title Chief Media Analyst.
I’ve been a fan of Brian’s since he founded TV Newser as an undergraduate at Towson University in Maryland in 2004, and then was hired right out of college at age 22 to become a media reporter at the New York Times alongside the legendary David Carr. He was plucked away by CNN in 2013 to take over the Reliable Sources TV show when former host Howard Kurtz defected to Fox News.
Brian was stupidly ousted two years ago by then-CEO Chris Licht, who proved himself so bad at the job that he was fired a year after that. Licht fired Stelter (allegedly) on the orders of the new owners at Warner Brothers/Discovery — particularly CEO David Zaslav and conservative investor John Malone, who didn’t like that, on his “Reliable Sources” TV show, Stelter had the guts to tell the truth about many of the lies spewed by Trump and other right-wing extremists. The big shots thought Brian was too partisan, when all he was doing was revealing distortion and dishonesty on a regular basis.
I’m not sure how Brian snuck back in the building, considering Zaslov and Malone are still at the top of the WBD pyramid, despite a decline in both earnings and ratings. I’m guessing credit goes to new CNN CEO Mark Thompson. Regardless, I’m glad Brian’s back on the beat and look forward to reading his daily Reliable Sources dispatches again. I don’t watch cable news much, but I’m sure he’ll pop up on pretty much every CNN show, too. And I won’t be surprised when the TV show returns — not on the air, but as a digital-only product.
When Brian was fired, CNN canceled the Reliable Sources TV show but kept the newsletter alive by handing it off to Oliver Darcy, who had been a valuable contributor for years. Oliver did a terrific job with it. Like Brian, he had no problem writing about the insanity of right-wing politicians, broadcasters, and others. He requently called out Fox News and similar outlets for not pushing back against Trump and his enablers, and he went after left-of-center networks and newsrooms when they went off the deep end, too.
Oliver left CNN a couple of weeks ago, but it’s not because Zaslav kicked him out. He departed to be his own boss and begin publishing his own newsletter, Status, which covers much the same ground. I subscribe to both Brian’s and Oliver’s newsletters, and expect them to be more complementary than competitive (except for getting scoops, of course!).
We need voices like theirs inside the media infrastructure in order to keep it from running amok and blowing the whistle when public figures step out of bounds.