FAREWELL BRIAN STELTER…FOR NOW:
One of cable news infotainment’s most shameless hosts is out of a job. On Thursday CNN canceled the Sunday morning show Reliable Sources and released its host Brian Stelter.
The media’s janitor, as I’ve come to call him, is unemployed for now, but don’t expect it to last. The New York Times has had a media columnist opening since Ben Smith left in January — and that’s where Stelter made his name.
I hate to burst the bubble of those celebrating the departure of one of the most dishonest figures in the national media, but Stelter, for some reason or another, is highly respected in the industry. His CNN newsletter is one of the highest circulated among journalists, whom Stelter worked to shield from controversy from atop his perch on the wall at CNN.
It’s been quite a run for the media’s janitor: Bye-Bye, Brian.
At this point it’s almost cliché to say so, but what Stelter meant when he used words like “misinformation” was right-wing. For all the Reliable Sources anchor’s garment-rending about declining trust in the media, he spent a disproportionate amount of time covering for his industry’s egregiously biased, activist behavior over the course of the past few years. He defended his colleague Chris Cuomo’s unethical role as an adviser to his brother, the disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. He regularly offered up his show as a platform for Biden officials to repeat White House propaganda. On Jussie Smollett, he argued: “We may never know what happened.” And he himself regularly engaged in “misinformation,” including championing the fraudulent “Steele dossier” narrative. (When new details about the dossier’s fraudulent nature emerged, Stelter protested: “I’m a media reporter, and I’m not a Steele dossier reporter.”)
Stelter also served as the mainstream media’s attack dog when right-leaning outlets published stories that were inconvenient for Democrats. As Isaac Schorr and Brittany Bernstein pointed out, for example, Stelter went to the mat to discredit the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop:
Instead of praising the Post for its work, Stelter responded to the story by running a segment called “How the latest anti-Biden narrative was manufactured,” in which he attacked the Post for its reporting, called it part of the “right-wing media machine,” and asserted that the story didn’t “add up.” One year later, precisely none of the Post’s reporting has been debunked and much of it has been confirmed.
Related: Brian Stelter Torched After Being Ousted By CNN: ‘Contemptible, Vapid, And Unbearably Smug.’
New CNN chief Chris Licht reportedly informed Stelter of the decision to cancel his show, “Reliable Sources,” yesterday. Licht started to evaluate the hyper-partisan “talent” at the network shortly after he joined CNN as he aimed to dial down the extreme partisanship that has plagued the network in recent years.
News of Stelter’s ouster from the network sparked a wide range of comments mocking him, with many saying that he had a toxic impact on the news industry.
“Brian Stelter was the most contemptible, vapid, and unbearably smug news-tv character of the past two decades. Good riddance,” Washington Examiner columnist Harry Khachatrian wrote on Twitter. “His departure has ameliorated cable news.”
“Everyone’s dunking on Brian Stelter since his show got canceled, but I honestly feel really bad for his fan,” conservative political commentator Allie Beth Stuckey said.
And he bravely outed himself yesterday!
(Updated and bumped.)