The Media Research Center kept up its rage against Oliver Darcy for not being a right-wing shill like they are in a Feb. 16 post by Curtis Houck, who continues to be in denial that NewsNation is a right-wing channel:
Writing Sunday night for Oliver Darcy’s website Status (which, in addition to threatening to cancel NewsBusters’s subscription, hurled a series of smears Friday at the Media Research Center and conservative media writ large), Natalie Korach (pictured right) shoveled a series of anonymous jabs and loaded declarations to assert NewsNation is MAGA TV simply to please Donald Trump and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
At the end of the day, though, NewsNation’s moniker of “news for all Americans” is the kind of thing that makes the skins of Darcy, Korach, and colleague Jon Passantino crawl.
Korach doubled down on Darcy’s December 15 screed insisting Katie Pavlich — a former longtime Fox News contributor and Townhall editor — was brought on as a case of conservative affirmative action (and thus not on her talent) to ensure Trump and Carr approval of parent company Nexstar’s acquisition of Tegna (the TV arm of Gannett, USA Today’s parent company).
In her piece “NewsNation’s Audience of One,” Korach claimed NewsNation “has visibly tilted right, staffing up on former Fox News personalities, in what insiders believe to be an effort to smooth its expansion plans.”
Of course, no one would put their name to their backstabbing and Korach herself played dutiful hack purposefully leaving out former liberal network journalists such as Chris Cillizza (CNN), Chris Cuomo (ABC and CNN), Geraldo Rivera (ABC and Fox News), Elizabeth Vargas (ABC), Mike Viqueira (NBC), or NewsNation liberals such as A. Scott Bodlen Kurt Bardella, Lindsey Granger (former Melissa Harris-Perry producer), or Chris Hahn to name a few.
Yet Houck has rarely written about those supposedly liberal people on NewsNation, whereas they have repeatedly promoted the channel’s right-wing hosts, i.e., Katie Pavich. Still, he continued to whine:
Korach said “[t]he most glaring example of the network’s MAGA-friendly pivot” was Pavlich joining the fray.
“But to some internally, Pavlich’s hire was an unmistakable sign that the network’s centrist posture has given way to something more closely resembling a Fox News knockoff, particularly as Nexstar seeks regulatory approval for its Tegna deal,” Korach asserted using more anonymous smears, adding Carr tweeting his congratulations was proof of a quid-pro-quo and “internal suspicions” Pavlich’s hire was “designed” for a specific purpose.
Someone find Natalie a white board so she can channel Charlie Day’s character in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
After scoffing at her ratings for “reliably Trump-friendly and conservative commentary-heavy” programming, she found a current colleague of Pavlich’s at NewsNation to scoff that her behavior was been “predictable” in soiling the network with “pro-Trump garbage.”
Houck wouldn’t admit that NewsNation host Leland Vittert, a former Fox News employee, is right-wing — even though it has promoted him in the past — instead whining that another ex-Fox hire, Christ Stirewalt, “is extremely anti-Trump and not at all MAGA.” He didn’t mention that Fox News fired Stirewalt after he called the election for Joe Biden in 2020 — a move apparently done to please Donald Trump. He also failed to mention that his MRC colleagues praised Pavich’s softball interview with Trump earlier this year.
Two days later, it was Tim Graham’s turn to whine about Darcy:
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper announced he wouldn’t renew his contract with CBS News as a reporter for 60 Minutes after 20 years. He claimed it was to spend more time with his family, which cynics never accept when politicians assert it. The Left wanted to blamed new CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss for it.
Oliver Darcy marshaled his anonymous sources against Weiss for his website. “Status has learned that Cooper had grown increasingly uneasy with the rightward direction the network has charted under Weiss’s leadership & David Ellison’s ownership of parent company Paramount.”
What rightward shift?? There’s been talk about reaching out to the broad middle of America, but has that actually happened? Even delaying a segment — like Sharyn Alfonsi’s tirade against Trump’s deportations to an El Salvadoran prison — was somehow right-wing.
For our part, the most memorable Cooper segments on 60 Minutes were decidedly leftward — as usual — and soft as new snow, like the gush over Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in 2022. Sometimes, it bled over to CNN, where No-Conflicts Cooper lobbed softballs at his CBS colleague Scott Pelley after CNN aired George Clooney’s CBS-puffing play about Edward R. Murrow.
No mention of the softballs he and Houck lobbed at onetime White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Graham went on to huff:
Darcy connected the departure to a 60 Minutes piece Cooper had been working on about Trump’s decision to accept white refugees from South Africa. It’s apparently been “subjected to an intense level of editorial scrutiny” from both Executive Producer Tanya Simon and Weiss. Whites apparently can’t feel endangered and apply for refugee status.
Except that isn’t true. Graham couldn’t be bothered to fact-check that claim.
Houck returned to whine in a Feb. 27 post:
Status founder Oliver Darcy lost his noodle Thursday night in his newsletter over Netflix backing out of its proposal to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery and its litany of properties that include CNN, paving the way for the bid from David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance (which includes CBS). Darcy argued “CNN staffers have every reason to be worried” and predicted it’ll undergo a “MAGA-fication” akin to what he said has happened at CBS.
Back in reality, though, anyone who’s watched CBS News thus far under Bari Weiss would find that, outside of the first few weeks of Tony Dokoupil’s CBS Evening News, nothing has changed in terms of its tone and tenor. Day after day, it exuded liberal bias.
[…]After citing Trump’s past comments about Warner Bros. Discovery being up for sale and claiming he has sources that told him the administration was ebullient Thursday about Paramount Skydance’s triumph, Darcy argued this was a conspiracy all along that “Trump…helped all but deliver CNN into the hands of an ally.”
At no point does Houck make an effort to rebut anything Darcy wrote beyond complaining that CBS hasn’t moved right-wing enough under Weiss, which he promotes as a feature instead of a bug. He concluded by huffing: “On issue after issue, the ideological needle has yet to consistently move toward the center at CBS and there’s nothing Darcy et al can do to claim otherwise.” He doesn’t explain why he and the MRC have chosen to defend Dokoupil instead of criticizing him as they have in the past.