The Media Research Center’s raging case of Brian Stelter Derangement Syndrome lingered long after he left CNN in 2022 (which the MRC was, of course, bizarrely gleeful about). This obsession continued during the first half of 2024, and not just when Stelter critiqued Donald Trump’s New York trial. Tim Graham huffed in a Jan. 11 post:
Eyeballs were rolled when Brian Stelter argued to MSNBC’s Joy Reid that Fox’s audience is radicalized and wants to be dangerously misinformed, and in response, “It is not biased or partisan to tug on the side of truth.” Leftists constantly justify their righteous declarations of Democratic spin as the essence of what the late John McLaughlin used to call “ontological certitude.”
Earlier in this segment Stelter borrowed this Margaret Sullivan trope. the “reality-based world,” which he described as Democrats, moderates, independents, and Chris Christie. You are required to oppose Trump as a mortal threat, or you don’t qualify as “reality-based.”
But Graham made that exact same argument in defending Fox News over its massive $787 million settlement with Dominion over spreading false claims of election fraud, declaring that the settlement “won’t damage Fox’s reputation — or let’s put it this way: It won’t damage people’s reliance on Fox to try and balance out what the liberal media does.” In other words: Graham agrees that Fox viewers choose to be misinformed.
In an April 30 post, Alex Christy got mad that Stelter used Graham’s Fox News no-judgment approach on college protesters:
Former CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter returned to the network on Monday’s CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip to acknowledge that while there have been insistences of anti-Semitism among the Columbia campers, “we should try to remain as free of judgment of the students as we can” because he, his fellow panelists, and most of his viewers used to be students as well.
Stelter was responding to National Review’s Reihan Salam, who took a radically different approach, “When you look at the Columbia campus, when you look at the UCLA campus and a number of other campuses, what you have is really violence, intimidation, harassment that has become really systematic and really quite terrifying.”
Graham returned in a June 14 post:
Forever earnest Brian Stelter tweeted out his late-night appearance on CNN with Abby Phillip.
“MSNBC’s Maddow is right to be thinking aloud about the possible repercussions of a second Trump term,” he typed. “Other media types and political veterans are doing the same thing. What might “retribution” look like? What are the pressure points that Trump could target?”
[…]Trump and his closest lieutenants have openly talked a big game about taking revenge on anti-Trump media outlets, so that concern is legitimate. It’s the crazy talk about prison camps for cable-news hosts that sounds cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs. But Stelter thinks it’s right to “be thinking aloud.”
Do we know that it’s “crazy”? Given Trump’s abject hatred for any media that does not constantly fawn over like (like, you know, the MRC), prison camps for journalists are very much within the realm of possibility — and Graham would be cheering their construction.
When Stelter complained about misleading, out-of-context videos of President Biden, Graham complained in his June 19 podcast:
Brian Stelter is back on CNN again, claiming that somehow the videos showing Joe Biden bumbling are somehow sometimes “made up.” CNN host Abby Phillip asked Stelter on Monday about what’s being “deceptively characterized” in Biden’s public appearances. Stelter claimed: “This is a real problem. This is not some made-up fiction. The videos are oftentimes made up, but the problem is real.”
Stelter argued tough Biden ads slamming Trump as a convicted criminal are no match for “ugly Instagram reels and New York Post covers.” He wonders if “information pollution isn’t more powerful than the old fashioned, traditional ways of communicating.”
Elite journalists don’t worry about those reliable sophisticates that watch their programs. They worry about voters who don’t watch them, who don’t know their names, are beyond their influence.
But those videos are very much misleading, which Graham and his fellow right-wingers are desperate to deny.
When Stelter pointed out Trump’s inherent nastiness to his critics and political opponents, Christy objected in a June 20 post:
Should the upcoming debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump focus on policy or personality questions? For former CNN media correspondent and current Vanity Fair special correspondent Brian Stelter, the answer depends on who is attacking whom. On Thursday’s CNN News Central, Stelter claimed the debate poses a great opportunity for Biden to attack Trump’s “controversies and scandals,” but lamented that Trump will probably be “cruel” to Biden instead of talking policy.
Host Boris Sanchez asked Stelter to give advice to both camps on how to go viral at the debate, “So if you’re in either camp, what’s the approach to seeking out a moment at the debate for virality?”
Stelter began by declaring that Biden is aware that most people aren’t as well informed as CNN viewers allegedly are, “Well, you know, number one, I think these candidates, especially Biden, are going to come into this, assuming that people have not been paying attention because, yes, there are probably 10 or 20 million Americans who are news junkies, CNN fans who are up to speed on all the latest developments, they know about all of Trump’s temper tantrums. They know about all of his claims, his talk about being a dictator.”
He further claimed that “Biden is also aware and his aides are aware that many Americans have not heard about all of this. They’ve not been tuned in, so for Biden, especially it’s a chance to raise the salience of Trump controversies and scandals and bring those home to Americans. Those are the moments I think Biden is going to want to create to try to clip.”
On the other hand, “For Trump, you know, it’s anyone’s guess, right? He’s claiming he’s not going to be prepping the way Biden is, so it’s anyone’s guess.”
Christy didn’t dispute the accuracy of anything Stelter said.