The Media Research Center has long obsessively hated media reporter Oliver Darcy — largely because he stopped being a right-wing hack like the MRC is. Curtis Houck regularly smears him as a “Benedict Arnold” of conservative media for the offense of abandoning right-wing outlets like Campus Reform and The Blaze to eventually end up at CNN, whining that he was “trying to ruin the lives of the same kinds of people who gave him his start in politics” (as if Houck doesn’t try to ruin the lives of anyone who’s not as right-wing as he is). Last year, it raged at Darcy for critiquing CNN’s ill-fated town hall with Donald Trump, then cheered that he reportedly got a dressing-down by then-CNN leader Chris Licht over it, begging him to fire Darcy (as it turned out, Licht was fired a month later while Darcy stayed on the job). After that, the MRC continued to lash out at Darcy:
- Oliver Darcy Wails Over White House Anger at Fox Chyron, NYT’s Disobedience
- Darcy’s Farce: CNN Backs Team Biden’s Letter Telling Media To Get Tougher On GOP!
- CNN’s Oliver Darcy LASHES OUT at NBC’s Welker for Trump Interview
- CNN Trots Out Cartoonish Darcy to Trash ‘Smear’ of Stringer Kissed by Hamas Leader
- Team Biden Skips Super Bowl Softballs Again, CNN’s Oliver Darcy Falls In Line
- HA! CNN’s Darcy Ridiculously Claims New York Times Is Anti-Biden, Pro-Trump
- Column: CNN’s Darcy Rips Elon Musk, Sinking Into the ‘Right-Wing Fever Swamps’
- CNN’s Oliver Darcy RAGES at ‘Infernal’ Wall Street Journal on Biden ‘Signs of Slipping’
When Darcy announced he was leaving CNN to start his own media newsletter, the MRC’s Tim Graham responded in a Aug. 8 post with all the gracelessness and childish name-called you’d expect:
Another red-hot Fox News hater is departing CNN. Oliver Darcy — or as we call him, “Farcy Darcy” — is going independent. You could count on Darcy to sympathize if you wish like the NAACP that Fox News could just be banned. Because you want to “save democracy.”
You could get the so-called CNN “Reliable Sources” newsletter for free, but Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times reports subscriptions to the new Darcy newsletter, simply called “Status,” will begin at $15 a month or $150 per year; an elite membership, with perks like private Zoom calls, is available for $595 annually.
Someone apparently thinks a private Zoom call with Farcy Darcy is a “perk” worth $595. Here’s who Darcy’s leftist commentary attracts: Keith Olbermann, who lamented “Well there goes one of the few useful reporters @cnn.” Howard Polskin of The Righting newsletter gushed “Darcy is a sharp wordsmith who knows how to make words dance.”
In recent years, Darcy ripped into the new regime of CEO Chris Licht, who lamely attempted to calm down the hyperbole in CNN’s Trump coverage. During the recent Republican National Convention, Darcy called out the network for airing “lie-filled speeches” with “little to no pushback.” The CNN brass must have wished they sent him packing alongside Brian Stelter in 2022.
Nevertheless, CNN CEO Mark Thompson proclaimed “Oliver has established himself as a tough but scrupulously fair leading voice in media reporting and commentary – never afraid to call it as he sees it.” Conservatives would not use words like “scrupulously fair.” Darcy constantly warned of “the truth under assault” by the conservative media, as if truth was an exclusively liberal category.
Graham does not explain why Fox News is above criticism, or how Darcy tone with the outlet is any different from what the MRC hurls at CNN or any other non-right-wing outlet whom Graham and crew desperately wish would be taken off the air for the sin of criticizing Trump. And Graham believes that Trump always tells the truth and it’s a personal affront for anyone to point out that he doesn’t.
After Darcy stated that he would be “a 100 percent independent voice,” Graham huffed: “This will be as ‘independent’ as the ‘independent fact-checkers’ — in other words, a reliably leftist source.” Graham refused to explain how, exactly, it’s “leftist” of Darcy to point out Trump’s lies.