The Media Research Center — mostly Curtis Houck — has been spending much of this year raging against media reporter Oliver Darcy for doing his job. In addition to the usual ways, he’s been bashed for calling out the bribe-y nature of Paramount’s financial settlement with President Trump, noting that right-wing media loves to demonize transgender people, and observing the violent rhetoric of right-wingers following the death of Charlie Kirk. Houck raged even more at Kirk in an Aug. 15 post:
Former conservative reporter-turned-far-left authoritarian prick Oliver Darcy wrote Thursday night in his newsletter Status that “dishonest MAGA commentator Scott Jennings” of CNN and fellow Trump supporter Jillian Michaels were examples of “political arsonists…whose contributions amount to provocation, misinformation, and hijacked conversations” and thus unjustly given a voice on Wednesday’s CNN NewsNight.
So, yes, Darcy did that bit liberal journalists love to engage in where they show no regard for the First Amendment rights of others, but will fight like hell for their own.
Despite correctly referring to the show we like to call CNN Thunderdome “a circus,” Darcy whined the reason it’s that way is because, well, people who make him feel icky are allowed to exist.
Darcy dubbed it so because of “unserious guests and manufactured conflict” with Michaels the latest because “the fitness trainer” gave “a bizarre defense of Donald Trump on slavery.”
Houck never explained why he considers Darcy a “prick” just because he does his job, nor did he factually dispute Darcy’s contention that Jennings is “dishonest.” Instead, he whined:
Unsurprisingly, this was the latest attempt by Darcy to drum up support to have CNN fire the man whose appearances draw millions of eyeballs to social media clips of CNN segments and arguably have kept Phillip employed. It squares with the man who has tried to pressure cable companies to drop Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News.
Houck and the MRC have a huge love affair with Jennings.
He targeted more name-calling at Darcy in a Sept. 3 post:
Former CNN senior media reporter and liberal media janitor Oliver Darcy expressed disgust in his Tuesday night newsletter Status that “one of Warner Bros. Discovery’s most powerful stakeholders” and legendary media boss John Malone has been blasting CNN this week in interviews with CNBC and The New York Times about a new memoir, insisting CNN’s “a left-leaning, anti-Trump news service” run by “progressives.”
As a result, he argued, CNN has become “a shadow of what its founder [Ted Turner] had envisioned” even if it has some “great journalists.”
For this, Darcy seethed that his “groans” and “swipes” were a reminder “most of the MAGA audience simply cannot be appeased” no matter the number of “moves to soften its posture toward Trump” like “oust[ing] top anchors like Don Lemon and Jim Acosta, put[ting] dishonest MAGA commentators like Scott Jennings across its programming, and, broadly speaking, toned down the punchy style in which it reported during the Jeff Zucker years.”
Darcy — the man who melted down over One America News being allowed on YouTube TV and has supported efforts to ban Fox News, Newsmax, and any conservative media outlet from cable packages — claimed Malone and anyone who dares to raise concerns about CNN’s biases are impatient and impossible to please.
[…]Darcy likes to pretend we at NewsBusters don’t exist, but let’s go ahead anyway and call this pants on fire.
Yet Houck didn’t actually dispute the accuracy of anything Darcy said. He went on to tout how Malone made his attacks on CNN “speaking on his yacht off the coast of Maine,” which is hardly the way to demonstrate that someone is in touch with reality.