This is why you never report when angry. Brian Stelter is reduced to an emotional tantrum as Fox turns 25.
As mentioned earlier, Fox News is recognizing its 25th anniversary today, a success story no matter how you look at it. The network was built from scratch, had all manner of competitive obstacles placed in front, and has been the focus of wrath from many in the media. All they have done is gradually become a market force, an industry leader, and a political influencer.
And Brian Stelter cannot take it. While there are many in the press delivering various degrees of veiled praise and outright scorn for the network today, Stelter’s ode to Fox is the most revealing. He spends a 2-minute monologue unloading the kind of mental baggage a therapist would charge double to endure. His speech is not only steeped in contempt but it is filled with so many hypocritical bromides you have to wonder how no one pulled him aside to rethink his script.
This thing is a marvel.
For the families who feel they have been torn apart by Fox, this is not a happy 25th anniversary. pic.twitter.com/fos1yim7Jp
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 7, 2021
This segment was so filled with content it needs to be picked apart. Let’s just get this thing on the gurney and start slicing into the goods.
The network is turning 25 and running lots of commercials celebrating its birthday. But you won’t hear any honest assessment of Fox — ON FOX.
- Quite a rich statement from a media analyst who has shown himself incapable of being critical of his own network, even when it is seen violating the kind of journalistic ethics he loves to rail over. Yet, he expects Fox to dig up its own dirt in the midst of a celebration.
But the network evolved – or DE-volved – Into the beating heart of the GOP. A heart with clogged arteries and weak muscles.
- Okay, I’m sorry — I just cannot abide this. I do not normally DEvolve into looks and appearances, but seriously here Brian? You are hardly promoting the image of someone who can speak critically on the aerobic qualities of anyone’s physical condition.
It’s the network that gave us inspirational stories about the military and Middle America — but also smothering patriotism after 9/11.
- I cannot really bring myself to ask just what constitutes “smothering patriotism”. How that is seen as a negative following the terrorist attacks is left for us to wonder.
There was Jeff Smith narrating a llama chase! I mean, that was fun – I’ll never forget the llamas.
- I will grant Brian benefit of the doubt that he was possibly just being mirthful here, but it does feel like it could have been a backhanded swipe, considering this was in a rundown of the coverage on the network over the years. I mean, he could hardly be too critical over this instance, when his network was consumed with weeks of coverage on the zombie jet airliner.
You won’t see Roger Ailes in the retrospectives, but his abuse of women, his rage, his paranoia — it’s what translated into the network today.
- Seriously, he went there. Okay Brian, if the old charges of sexual predation of an executive are somehow emblematic of the content on Fox, what can be said when CNN allows the likes of Jeffrey Toobin and Chris Cuomo — who is facing his own sexual charges — today. These are on-air talent, so when it comes to that mentality translating onto the airwaves…
Ailes also brought us — Donald Trump.
- I only assume CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale is still on vacation, so allow me to fill in. Donald Trump was elevated by the collection of news channels, collecting (it was once counted) billions of dollars in free media appearances. He was such a feature on Morning Joe he could have been paid as a co-host.
For the families who feel like they’ve been torn apart by Fox — this week is not a happy anniversary.
- This is just flat out denialism at its nadir. Take for an instance a family with divided media preferences which align with their politics. Are the Fox News viewers any more, or less likely to be aggressive and intolerant towards family members than those who were inundated with messages that conservatives are racists, sexists, KKK members, Nazis, and all other manner of intolerant labels which have been permitted on CNN over the years? Can it be called brainwashing when there is the default mindset from many on the left that GOP means automatically someone is a racist? Look at how frequently it had been said that Republican policies would lead directly to the deaths of people, from tax cuts and Net Neutrality to current positions on the pandemic. To suggest CNN only broadcasts kindness and understanding is just a laughable concept.
This is to be expected from the self-described media analyst who seems incapable of analyzing any other media than Fox News. Look at the tendency to simply write off Fox as dispensing fake news and false narratives, when he has no critical words for his own network when it engages in that very behavior.
Recently on his show Reliable Sources, Stelter sort of addressed the issue of the fake “migrants whipped at the border” reports. He basically came around to praising the media for ultimately getting it right, after they were misled by social media. He never addressed how his own network spent days promoting the false story, as some reporters did so even after it was disproven. Then there was CNN repeating the fake story of hospitals overrun by Ivermectin poisonings, coming from Rolling Stone. No condemnation or critique was heard.
And this displays the issue. Fox — while yes, getting stories wrong on occasion — is never afforded that delayed congratulations for ultimately getting the story right. This spring, after making reports that Biden’s climate agenda would limit American meat consumption, it was found that the news item these were based upon was inaccurate. Fox corrected that story on the air — but never was given the praise of correcting. It was held up instead as an example of the lax journalism standards at the network.
And there is where the subterfuge exists. Despite being no different and no better than Fox on matters of journalistic accuracy, all other major news outlets operate with a far more permissive set of standards. While being just as inaccurate, biased, divisive, and tolerant of sexism as Fox News, the scorn for CNN and others just does not exist.
This environment of ‘We all do it, but they are in the wrong’ has become more revealed over the years, as the audiences see these charlatans in their real attire. The contempt that Brian Stelter revealed here is that while spending so much time attempting to apply his double-standard and wound Fox, the network is flourishing, CNN is foundering, and the general public is waking up to the tactics being used.
Maybe the accursed network can continue to thrive long enough for the man who allegedly covers all of the media to write another book centered entirely around Fox News.