The MRC’s Stelter Derangement Syndrome Continues

Brian Stelter left CNN months ago, but the Media Research Center continues to suffer from the same level of Stelter Derangement Syndrome it had when he was still in CNN’s employ, lashing out at him any time he pops up in the media. Curtis Houck, though, was surprisingly non-hostile to Stelter in a Feb. 24 post after he did a podcast with right-wing media critic Steve Krakauer:

Former CNN’s Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter made a rare return to a microphone Friday as he interviewed Megyn Kelly Show executive producer and Fourth Watch Podcast host Steve Krakauer about his new book, Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People. In just under an hour, the pair had a engaging and fascinating discussion about the media, CNN, Fox News, January 6, and his post-CNN life.

But for readers here, the newsiest topic came when Krakauer cited the New York Post reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop as an answer to this question from Stelter: “What are the ones that stand out most to you? What — what — what did me and my colleagues at CNN screw up the most, in your view?”

Krakauer first explained the reasoning, starting with the revelations from the Twitter Files that showed “a real suppression of that story, not just by tech platforms in conversation with — with government entities like intel agencies, like the FBI, but also from media organizations.”

[…]

To his credit, Stelter made his case at the end for the necessity of journalists to do more of “show[ing] that we’ve walked all the way around the block before we’ve started to write about the block and, you know, that’s my way of saying let’s be fair to everybody…because if you’re only writing about the story from the back yard, then you’re missing a big part of the story.”

Tim Graham referenced Krakauer’s interview with Stelter during his March 24 podcast in which he interviewed Krakauer:

Krakauer kicked off his book tour by bringing Brian Stelter to interview him on his own podcast. Typically, Stelter said to Krakauer that the press wasn’t the problem with democracy, it was the “press bashers.” But he told Krakauer he liked how he was a “constructive” media critic, where apparently most of us are “destructive” media critics. Destructive to democracy? Or just destructive to the reputations or brands of CNN, or PBS, or The New York Times?

Graham and the rest of the MRC repeatedly lashed out at Stelter anytime he was critical of Fox News; was Graham afraid Stelter was destructive to Fox News’ brand?

Graham served another attack on Stelter in an April 18 post:

Michael Luciano at Mediaite promoted Brian Stelter’s interview with Dan Abrams on NewsNation Tuesday evening. Stelter claimed he didn’t know why he was fired (well, when other red-hot Trump haters stayed).

[…]

Abrams wondered: “Do you think you represented the kind of opinion – particularly from the left – that Chris Licht wanted to distance himself from? Because I think that’s why he ended up letting you go.” 

“Well, I’m just gonna let you say it then,” he replied. “I think we were doing fantastic journalism at CNN for the nine years that I was there. And I also think Fox News really enjoyed making me a target and using horrible names about me and all that sort of stuff that happens in the cable news wars.”

He told Abrams: “I appreciate that shows like yours rise above that. But Fox, they often take the low road. They enjoyed making into a target and I think they enjoyed seeing me leave CNN.”

It’s a little funny for Stelter to talk about “taking the low road” when he’s most infamous for bringing on a guy claiming Trump would kill more people that Stalin, Hitler, and Mao combined. That’s a little lower than Greg Gutfeld mocking Stelter about his weight.

Graham seems to think fat jokes about Stelter are justified solely because he once brought on a guest who criticized Fox News. (There’s Graham protecting Fox News’ brand again!) He didn’t explain how he justified this, though.

Kevin Tober spent a May 9 post complaining that Stelter criticized the MRC-beloved Tucker Carlson after his firing from Fox as well as Elon Musk’s management of Twitter:

Shortly after former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced on Twitter that he would be bringing his popular show to the social media platform, Tom Costello while guest hosting NBC News NOW’s Hallie Jackson NOW, brought on ousted former CNN host and media janitor Brian Stelter to assist in smearing Carlson, Twitter, and CEO Elon Musk. 

“Twitter was already under fire for misinformation, disinformation, all-out lies, anti-semitism, racism before Elon Musk took over and now it’s gotten kind of crazy, right? Seemingly unmoored, if you will,” Costello sneered to Stelter. 

“Will anybody be able to police what Carlson says? Or is this the point? It’s just a free-for-all?” Costello asked.

Stelter, of course, agreed claiming “It is a free-for-all” because “it’s what Elon Musk wants to provide.” He then proclaimed that “This move by Tucker may cement the idea of Twitter as a right-wing website, and we see some users trying to go off to other sites instead.”[…]

It’s fitting that NBC would drag Stelter back onto television to throw barbs at Carlson. When Stelter still had his Sunday morning media analysis program on CNN, Carlson was always a frequent target of Stelter. And of course, Carlson found him amusing and frequently mocked him.

Despite alluding to insults, Tober failed to dispute anything Stelter said.

Following the firing of CNN Chris Licht — who had fired Stelter from the channel — Stelter made a TV appearance to talk about it, which drew the ire of Alex Christy in a June 7 post:

Former CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter journeyed over to CNBC’s The Exchange on Wednesday to react to Chris Licht stepping down as CEO of CNN and to claim that he and others opposed to Licht’s vision were simply “advocating for the truth.” Meanwhile, in other humorous developments, CNBC.com media reporter Alex Sherman condemned Licht for killing off CNN’s “north star”: CNN+.

[…]

One of those who was not onboard with that vision was Stelter, which is why he was sacked by Licht and was now appearing on CNBC. He explained that “A lot of us when we were at CNN in the Trump years felt we were advocating for the truth, advocating for reality. Others felt that was left-leaning.

Others felt that way because it was and Stelter was one of the biggest voices for that activist approach. Unwittingly confirming his critics correct, Stelter argued that it is almost impossible for CNN to follow a “just the facts” sort of journalism, “I think it is right to have this desire to have a much more calm, less controversial political environment that CNN can then cover, but we don’t live in that world. In fact, if anything it’s only going to get more chaotic with Donald Trump as the leading contender for the GOP nomination.”

Stelter followed up by claiming that CNN cannot be “all things to all people” because that means “you’re not anything to anybody and that’s the CNN challenge, it always has been, for 40 years, to just try to be the plain vanilla news, well, in an environment where people don’t just want plain, vanilla news.”

While it was nice of Stelter to admit that when forced to choose between its hysterically anti-Trump audience and “vanilla news,” CNN chose the former, Sherman would later bring in some comedy.

He argued that “there needs to be more of a vision than just ‘you got to take down the breaking news, we got to turn down the knob here.’”

Of course, as we noted in documenting the MRC’s disappointment that Licht lost his job, the MRC would never demand that Fox News abandon its “activist approach” and become “vanilla news.”