Watch: Showdown at CNN As Sneering Campaign to Diminish New Media Voices Crashes and Burns

The inclusion of New Media journalists and social media influencers in the White House press briefing room, which was teased in early January and officially announced after Donald Trump's inauguration, has caused some heartbreak and triggering among Legacy Media outlets and their supporters over the last three months.

Their collective outrage has resulted in a slew of conveniently timed pieces from some of the more "traditional" news operations of late under the guise of simply "informing" readers/viewers as to the latest developments in White House communications operations.

Among them is Politico, which published an article Tuesday on "the 8 MAGA Outlets Disrupting the White House Briefing Room." Another was CNN, which has been doing a series on “MisinfoNation: Extreme America," one segment from which reporter Donie O'Sullivan laughed it up with Luigi Mangione fangirl Taylor Lorenz, and then later declared without evidence that right-wing extremism and violence are much more pervasive than the left-wing variety.

O'Sullivan, who CNN has marketed as a "MAGA expert" of sorts, recently spent time with some of those New Media voices, including Bannon War Room co-host Natalie Winters, to get their perspectives on the co-existence of both New and Legacy Media outlets in the briefing room.

In one clip Winters shared to social media, O'Sullivan asked her what she would say to people who don't think she's a "real journalist." Here's how the conversation went down:

O'Sullivan: "To the people - and I'm sure you see this online every single day - who say you don't deserve to be here because you're not a real journalist, what's your response to them?"
Winters: "Well, I'm pretty sure the group of people in there spent - what was it, four years - covering for someone who was, essentially, dead, and that's being charitable in my description of him, a president by the name of Joe Biden. So, to all those people who are apoplectic over having New Media voices, you guys failed, and that's why we're here."

Watch:

CNN: “Are you a real journalist?”

Natalie: “The rest of the media covered for a president that was essentially dead. You failed. That’s why new media is here.” pic.twitter.com/ok5YtruWRt
— Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) April 23, 2025

And a heated back-and-forth exchange on CNN Tuesday night on how traditional media is "dying" saw "NewsNight" host Abby Phillip try to blame "the right" for trust in the media being at all-time lows, and another panelist refer to New Media outlet reporters as "freaks." This prompted GOP strategist Scott Jennings to lay the inconvenient facts out on the table about the real reasons why New Media voices were rising amid historically low approval ratings for the press.

The full transcript can be read here. Partial is below courtesy of the tweet:

JENNINGS: "What the right wing is taking advantage of is finally the American people saying enough is enough. They're tired of feeling like the mass media screens out one viewpoint versus another in political coverage. They're tired of media institutions favoring one party over another. They're tired of narratives over factual stories. If I had any advice for 60 Minutes or anybody else, it would be: just cover the news and try to be fair about it and stop putting your finger on the scale, especially during campaigns."
[...]
PHILLIP: "Let's be honest, Scott, a lot of this is driven by the rhetoric on your side of aisle."
JENNINGS: "You think it's driven by the rhetoric and not the performance?"
PHILLIP: "Absolutely."
JENNINGS: "If you're CBS or any other news outlet, the reason that you have lost trust ought to be obvious to you, and the way to fix it also ought to be obvious to you, and it has nothing to do with Donald Trump and everything to do with the product. Just try to make a better product that appeals to more people. And the way you appeal to more people is by not crapping on half or more than half of the country because of their values and political viewpoints!"
JEFF JARVIS: "What you'd end up with in that press room, is, and these are my words, the freak show that Trump wants. Trump tries to devalue media. Why should we value his freak show there? Let's leave it to the freaks!"
JENNINGS: "Calling them freaks is something. He called these new media sources the freak show. They're not freaks. They have audiences. They have audiences, and there's a reason that they're thriving - is because people are starved for information that they think they can trust. They're not freaks. They're filling a need in this country."

Watch:

🚨 Scott Jennings GOES OFF on CNN panel after they blame the RIGHT-WING for a lack of trust in media and call new media "freaks."

JENNINGS: "What the right wing is taking advantage of is finally the American people saying enough is enough. They're tired of feeling like the mass… pic.twitter.com/kg6SFo6xG4
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 23, 2025

Though both Winters and Jennings nailed it in their observations about how Legacy Media has utterly failed the American people, it's always amazing to me that those who most undercut arguments against New Media are Legacy Media defenders themselves with their sneering and their treatment of alternative news sources as "not real journalists."

Keep it up, guys. You're doing a great job of making New Media's case for inclusion for them.

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