For the last two years, Oliver Darcy was the reporter most of the media industry went to bed reading. At the helm of CNN’s popular Reliable Sources newsletter, Darcy provided a steady current of reporting, analysis, and opinion on the media industry, which landed in inboxes several nights a week.
Darcy announced that after seven years at the network he would be leaving — to launch Status, his own newsletter which will seek to mimic the success of the CNN email blast.
“People are tired of sanitized, soulless news,” he told Mediaite editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin on this week’s episode of Press Club. “They want a human being at the other side of the platform, especially if this is the last thing they are reading before they go to bed.”
Status, according to Darcy, will bring reporting and commentary on everything from the cable news industry to tech and Hollywood, five nights a week. It’s a heavy workload, but one Darcy became accustomed to at Reliable Sources. The newsletter is premium, with the cheapest membership starting at $15 per month or $150 per year.
“What Status is aiming to do is yes, there’s a reported column at the top, but I’m going to tell you everything that happened in the information wars today, or in Silicon Valley, or with Hollywood,” Darcy said.
Darcy took over the nightly dispatch from Brian Stelter, the relentless CNN anchor and media reporter who was fired by Chris Licht in 2022. He gave the newsletter a facelift and embraced a more strident tone of commentary that often drew fire from conservatives.
Darcy defended his coverage which often took the media to task for being insufficiently tough on Donald Trump: “I think that I just was more candid and plainspoken than a lot of other people who might write around that or massage the language so it sounds a little less provocative.”
His media criticism was regularly aimed at CNN itself, which led to clashes between Darcy and network brass. On Press Club, Darcy dished on his rather dramatic last few years at CNN, which included a tense meeting with Licht over Darcy’s tough criticism of CNN’s infamous town hall with Trump. “My job was not to be CNN public relations,” said Darcy. “My job was to cover the industry as fairly as possible. That does not mean giving CNN a pass.”
Darcy also spoke about his refusal to call Fox News a “news network,” the future of cable television, his own career in conservative media, and why Tucker Carlson owes him $1,000.
Mediaite’s Press Club airs in full Saturdays at 10 a.m. on Sirius XM’s POTUS Channel 124. You can also subscribe to Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.
You are what I think many profiles would call a veteran media reporter.
That’s weird when I hear you say that, because I’m only 33.
That ages you a little bit more than you like? Recently you announced that you were leaving CNN. Why did you decide to leave CNN?
I have this vision for a platform that covers media, news media, entertainment media, and also some of the social media tech aspect in a really no holds barred, very honest, manner. And I want to build something around that. And I really loved my time at CNN. I think I learned so much. I’ve learned pretty much everything at CNN, and I just felt like it was the right time to take this leap, to try something on my own, and to try building something that I can control and steer.
So the new newsletter is called Status. It’s great. I’m already an avid reader. But there are a lot of media newsletters. How does this one differ? How does it stand out from the herd?
Sure, so there are a lot of media newsletters. There’s not a definitive media briefing. And I think I’ve been doing that for a while now. And so I think this will be that. So for instance, there’s a lot of politics coverage. There’s a lot of politics newsletters. But if you work in politics, generally speaking, you subscribe to Politico Playbook. And that’s sort of the definitive thing you wake up with and you might go to bed with, and maybe there’s Axios and Punchbowl, but there is a market for that. And I think what Status is aiming to do is yes, there’s a reported column at the top, but I’m going to tell you everything that happened in the information wars today or in Silicon Valley or with Hollywood and the business and in just what movie is coming out this weekend? How much is it making at the box office? So there’s a lot of things happening in media. And I also would say that to that media is so, so important. I think media reporting is extremely important because it’s really at the epicenter of truth. And if you don’t have a strong media and a strong media media reporting, you can see truths start to erode. And then very bad things happen when there’s no shared reality. And so all of these different wings of the beat are interconnected. And I want to connect, there’s a lot of connective tissue. I want to connect the dots for the readers on a nightly basis.
You’re right. When I said it’s a competitive market, there’s a lot of media coverage. Obviously we have Mediaite, but there isn’t really an authoritative daily media newsletter.
It’s gathering too. There’s great media coverage on Mediaite, there’s great media coverage on Puck, and there’s a lot of good media coverage out there, but I’m trying to gather it, put it in one place for everyone, hand curate it. And also I’d say too, I think we’ve kind of lost what a newsletter is. There’s no definition of it. So there are columns that get emailed out and they come in your inbox, but they could be a standalone column on a website. Does that count as a newsletter? I don’t know. I feel like back in the day a newsletter was more like Playbook, Axios, and I think what Status is. And so it’s just connecting the dots for everyone, putting it in one place. And it’s not to say there’s not original reporting. There’s going to be original reporting. I’ve been doing that for a long time and there’s going to be sharp analysis, but also it’s filling a lot of buckets for a lot of people.
It’s funny, you and I were speaking a couple months ago about this big trend of journalists leaving major institutions, striking out on their own and finding success in building their own audiences. Did that play into your thinking when you decided to do this, that it was time to leave a place like CNN, which is obviously this major institution. It’s a great platform to be on. But you saw how journalism is turning into a personality-driven industry where you can have success with your own thing, catering to your own audience.
Yeah, I think that’s right. It’s also never been easier. Ten years ago, I don’t know if you could do this, but right now, I’m on Beehive. And they’re providing the infrastructure.
What’s Beehive?
So think of Substack. And there’s a few competitors out there, there’s Ghost, Beehive is great. The team has been great. And you can also heavily customize it so it has its own feel and look. And my website looks different than the other Beehive websites. And so that’s really what I love about that platform. But it’s never been easier. There are all these platforms. There’s Stripe which takes payments, it’s pretty seamless if you wanted to to do this. And I also think too that there’s this talk of brands like your brand, their brand. I actually think of it like I’m a human being and that’s what people want. They want a human being at the other side of the platform. They’re tired of sanitized, soulless news. And unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of that these days. They want to feel like at the end of the night, especially if this is the last thing they’re reading before they go to bed, which in many cases it is. They want to feel like I’m connecting with someone on the other end of that. I want to know like Darcy doesn’t like scary movies. Because I wrote that this week. And I think people enjoy that. I think that’s actually why the Drudge Report is so successful, because you know the things that Matt Drudge likes and the personality behind it. There’s taste and people gravitate toward that. I think that honesty is really what matters in today’s media environment.
One of the downsides of what you’re describing is audience capture. Are you concerned at all about the risk of falling victim to the audience and catering to them?
No, not at all. I’ve been writing, I wrote Reliable on my own for two years, and I actually think the audience very much liked it. I’m not worried about the audience rebelling in any way. I think that we see eye to eye on a lot of stuff. I think that’s why they read. And I think that the product itself, people have been going to bed reading some version of this for years now. And so it’s a little sticky. I go to parties like the Mediaite party at the end of the year. And people tell me I don’t go to bed until I read this thing. So if you could send it out sooner, that would be great, right? So it’s a part of their daily routine. And so I’m confident that the audience will come with me. I think we’re seeing a lot of that. And there’s been a lot of buzz and I’m actually thrilled by all the excitement for this. It’s been challenging to get off the ground. I think any new business is. But there’s been a lot of support from that audience.
You’re currently running the newsletter solo?
That’s correct.
Is there a plan to grow Status into something bigger? Hire correspondents, editors, what have you? Or do you want it to just be your newsletter?
Well, I’m definitely not trying to create CNN, or any of the major institutions, but yes, is there is a vision to grow it beyond just one newsletter? Of course. I want to get the core product established, set up on its two feet. And that’s going to take a little bit of time. I think actually we got it up pretty quickly given I left CNN exactly one week ago. That’s when it was announced.
You had no time off.
Yeah. So, I want to still get it standing a little firmer on the stand. But after that, yes, I would love to grow this. Maybe we have a podcast component, maybe some live events, particularly for the founders who are signing up for the founder’s membership and all sorts of different things. And I’m working with The Ankler, with Janice Mann, and they’re exploring different commercial opportunities as well.
Now, you’ve been very critical of Elon Musk.
Yes.
X, formerly Twitter, is a platform that a lot of journalists have used to promote their independent work. Are you going to go back to X now that you have launched something independent, or are you still planning on not using the platform?
I don’t have any plans to go back.
You’re not going back.
I feel like that platform is very, I haven’t been shy about it, I think I’ve been maybe more outspoken than anyone else.
You called it a “hate drenched platform” and Musk “a mercurial man who boosts debunked conspiracy theories as deranged as Pizzagate, smears the press, launches ugly attacks on figures like George Soros and organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, and elevates outright extremists.”
That summarizes my general view. I could go on. It’s not what it used to be for sure. It’s not going to go out of business tomorrow, but it does not feel to me like the platform that I joined and certainly not the platform that it was a few years ago. It seems like it’s really gone an ugly, dark direction.
You’re on Threads. Every time I go on there, I think, this doesn’t seem like it.
I wish they would lean into news more.
They hate news, right?
Well they said they didn’t like news and then they keep clarifying like we like sports news. We like tech news. We like fashion news. Every news except politics. But then they won’t define what politics is, which is really deeply frustrating because think about the election, right? Let’s say Taylor Swift endorses Harris tomorrow and posts on Threads or Instagram. Do they consider her like a politics figure? Is it only the small people who get reduced because of their political activism? So there are a lot of questions I have for X and Adam Mosseri, unfortunately, he generally refuses to do interviews. I’ve asked him for a long, long time and he’s always traveling or busy. He does not do interviews. So that’s that’s frustrating.
I want to talk about your time at CNN. It was fairly dramatic at the end there, I would say. You worked for years with Brian Stelter. He gets fired by Chris Licht. You take over Reliable Sources and clashed with Chris Licht when, after the infamous town hall with Donald Trump, you wrote in Reliable Sources, “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.” In Tim Alberta’s big Atlantic piece that preceded Licht’s firing, he said that Chris was shocked by your analysis and saw it as a betrayal. He said on the editorial call the next morning, “I absolutely, unequivocally believe America was served very well by what we did last night.” You effectively went to war with your boss. Why?
Well, I had an interesting role at CNN, which was to be a media reporter calling balls and strikes, and I never want to look someone in the eye and say, I give CNN a pass because I work here, because that’s terrible. Not only for my credibility. I viewed it as terrible for my own credibility, and something I would not do because it would violate my own ethics, but also terrible for the Reliable Sources brand. Because that was founded to provide that analytical lens. And if it’s terrible for the Reliable Sources brand, it’s terrible for the CNN brand, because if these brands don’t stand for something, if they don’t really mean something, then what are they? Right? And so my job, as uncomfortable as it was, was to say, I watched that town hall and I would say most people who watched that town hall did not think that that was a great event. And that was certainly the mood inside CNN at the time. And it was certainly the mood outside CNN. So I understand that was not something pleasant for someone to read, especially if they’re effectively signing your paycheck. But that’s also the job I was hired to do. And so I was executing the mission that I was given. And it’s something I’m proud of, and I think CNN should be proud of the fact that they for so long had someone in the building who is willing to criticize the network if it was warranted, right?
How uncomfortable did it get?
Well, it’s uncomfortable, but I don’t know another position — I was trying to think about this. I had such an unusual job when I was at CNN. What other person gets to openly, very publicly, not only in the company, but externally criticize not your boss or your boss’s boss, but your boss’s boss’s boss. And sometimes, your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. It’s pretty crazy, right? So you don’t get comfortable doing that. It’s strange. I respect a lot of people there and I can disagree with them. I think there’s that as well. But you do see people in the elevator. But it had to be done. That was the mission. So no one ever said it was easy.
Then Licht summoned you to his office, and there were top executives present, and you were told that the coverage of the Trump town hall had been “too emotional” and Licht stressed the importance of remaining “dispassionate.” What happened there?
I found that interesting because I don’t really feel like I’m an emotional person. I feel like I’m often very dispassionate. I definitely reject that claim. I think I was accurately reflecting the very broad sentiment, both internal and external. And I think it’s fair to say that Chris and I disagreed on that. And there was a meeting and he felt one way and I obviously felt another way. And I made that clear, I think, in the meeting that I respectfully stood by what I had written that night, and I think I still do today. I think it aged pretty well. The thing about media reporting is that when I was a media reporter at CNN, my job was not to be CNN public relations, my job was to cover the industry as fairly as possible. And so that means at times criticizing NBC or ABC or The New York Times. But that does not mean giving CNN a pass. And if they want someone to give CNN a pass, I’m not their guy. And so that’s effectively what I conveyed at that moment.
Chris Licht gets fired. CNN hires Mark Thompson. And you continue to be fairly tough on CNN. In the newsletter, you criticized their town hall with Vivek Ramaswamy and recently them airing the “lie-filled” RNC with “little to no pushback.” Did that criticism fuel any tensions at CNN in the run up to your exit? Did that have anything to do with you leaving?
No. Not that I’m aware of. Not on my side. I think actually Mark Thompson, to his credit, had let me be very straight with him. And I think he even said in his comment afterward that was something he respected. And I think he’s used to, coming from the BBC, where there’s a very strong tradition of internal criticism and coverage. I think he’s used to it. And he has very thick skin. I don’t think it led to any tension. I think, again, people in the building understood that at times I’m going to disagree with them. And it’s not that I don’t like the people there or that I don’t respect them. It’s just that we’re going to have disagreements and that’s fine. I think CNN should be proud to have people disagreeing and have a robust conversation about these matters. They’re very important right now.
I want to talk about the future of CNN. When Mark Thompson was named to replace Chris Licht, people were optimistic, because here’s this guy who has a track record — and an incredible CV — of taking old institutions and bringing them into the 21st century. Do people within CNN still have a lot of faith in his ability to bring the network forward and survive the cord-cutting apocalypse cable news is facing?
I think people are still waiting to see exactly where the network is going. I think that they want to certainly go into the 21st century. I think they’re just still waiting for what that plan ultimately looks like. I think in Thompson’s last note, which I can’t remember when it was, but it was recently, he said, “it’s not going to happen overnight.” I think there’s some desire to get somewhere sooner rather than later. And I think his team knows that, and they’re working on it. But he is the guy who did transform these institutions. So he does have that I think built in credibility with a lot of people. They’re just waiting for what that looks like. Like what’s the actual game plan here?
Is there concern about the future at CNN?
I think everyone’s concerned about the future, not only CNN but also all these legacy institutions and not even just the news institutions, but their parent companies. I think everyone’s seeing what’s happening with Paramount, with Warner Brothers Discovery. Their businesses are worth billions and billions of dollars less than they were just a few years ago. So there’s mass concern. If you’re not concerned, there’s something wrong with you because this whole industry, I think I wrote it the other day, is in distress. In turmoil. So, yeah, there’s concern. But I think this is when it’s really important to have a very good plan and have someone who’s experienced.
Let’s say you’re running CNN today. What do you do?
I’m trying to run a very tiny business. I don’t know if I’m in any position to give business advice to anyone right now. But it’s clearly in trouble. It’s clearly imperiled. I don’t know how you fix it or how you solve it. I think it’ll be around for a little bit longer, obviously, just like AOL, I think there are probably still people paying for AOL. But that’s not a great business, right? So I don’t know how you fix it. Obviously you got to get on digital more. You got to make a play for subscriptions on digital. You’ve got to get people engaged elsewhere outside the dying platform. But it’s also still a relevant platform too. So you’re basically trying to do surgery, like a transplant or something. You don’t want to kill the patient you’re transplanting from before you’ve actually transplanted the organ. So you got to keep both patients alive. And I think that’s what everyone in cable news is trying to do, just slowly do the surgery and it’s it’s challenging.
And cable carriers are very, very strict about you not killing the initial patient. They do not want you taking the content that you have on the cable carrier and putting it on a streaming platform.
Because they’re paying a lot.
They’re paying an enormous amount of money. CNN, for all of its ratings woes, still makes $1 billion in profit a year. I think that might have gone down but…
I think it’s gone down a little bit. But that’s still a lot of money. I mean that’s just pure profit. So the traditional way of distribution was a lot more profitable. And I think that’s the other problem too is yes, in these streaming platforms we’re seeing some profitability, very low amount of profitability. But it’s nowhere near like how profitable the the old business was. And I think that’s obviously the challenge is if you’re talking about news, can you afford to pay anchors millions of dollars a year when the business is no longer as profitable?
I want to talk about another cable news network, Fox News. At Reliable Sources, you did not refer to Fox as a news network. Why?
Well it’s not a news network. That’s the bottom line. It’s a talk network. I think of Fox News very similar to how I think of talk radio. Every hour, if you listen to talk radio, there’s some headlines that are read in a very straightforward manner and it lasts two minutes. And then it goes back to the commentary. And that’s sort of what Fox News is. It’s just a visual medium version of that. I think it’s just inaccurate to refer to them as that. And I also think after the Dominion documents, it should be plain as day for everyone to see that this network was not interested in advancing the truth. They knew things were not true and they allowed them to go on air anyway. It’s in the documents. And so to me, it’s actually quite baffling that the rest of the news media continue to give this veneer of credibility to this network, which has really done terrible things for the public discourse.
Defenders of Fox would say it’s no different from MSNBC.
That’s just totally nonsense.
What’s the evidence that it is?
One is the people on MSNBC are playing in reality, in fact. And so yes, Lawrence O’Donnell might have an opinion or Rachel Maddow might have an opinion or Alex Wagner may have an opinion, but they’re not going on air and lying to viewers or destroying the the credibility of institutions for ratings. And I think during the Trump era particularly, but still now, the things that Tucker Carlson was saying on air or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham or all these people, were not true. That was the problem, right? If you are a conservative, if you think tax cuts are great, sure. You make your argument in a fact-based manner, but if you just invent things out of thin air, that’s a problem. And I think that’s a big difference between MSNBC and Fox News. MSNBC is citing The New York Times, Fox News is citing some right wing blog and just making things up.
Your critics said that you were overly strident and opinionated when you ran Reliable Sources. What is your response to that?
I think people say that when you hit a nerve. And when you say things that other people are not willing to say. I think we called it balls and strikes just as we saw it. And so that made people at CNN uncomfortable at times. I’m sure that many people at NBC or wherever were uncomfortable. But that was the job. And so I wasn’t going to shy away from it. You just read something about the “lie-filled RNC.” Like that’s objectively what it was, right? Donald Trump, the GOP at the RNC. I think that I just was more candid and plainspoken than a lot of other people who might write around that a little bit or massage the language. So it sounds a little less provocative.
So you would agree with media critics who say that places like The New York Times are too reserved when they avoid, let’s say, calling Trump’s false claims lies.
They do now.
They do a little bit more.
I’ve criticized The New York Times and I’ll do it again right now when they refer to Fox News as a news channel. And there’s this other thing, it’s by omission sometimes. Fox News, at the very least, let’s just call it a right wing network. And most places generally refuse to categorize it as such. I just think if you’re going back, let’s just say fast forward 100 years and someone’s reading a paper record, and it doesn’t have that important context. They’re not going to have a full understanding of the news. And if you talk to the reporters, there’s no real reporter that covers media in an honest way that doesn’t think Fox News is right-wing, but then they just don’t tell the audience that pays the money for that information, and it makes no sense to me. And so if I had information in my head, and if I still do, I will give it to readers, because that is why they read me. That’s why they’re paying me. I want them to have that information. I don’t see the purpose in hiding it. I know it’s uncomfortable at times because you might get a call from someone who’s upset and they might go after you in some way, but that’s the job. You gotta have thick skin.
Why do you think that you and Brian Stelter received particular fire from Fox News and places like it?
I think because they know what we are writing matters. If it didn’t matter, they wouldn’t care. And so I think that’s really the bottom line. I think that also we were more forceful in calling out this nonsense than a lot of others. And so that generates a lot of feelings for them. And they got upset and contrary to I feel like what they tell people on air that we want all these opinions and blah, blah, blah, they do not want my opinion about Fox News being shared loudly.
Do you have good relationships with people at Fox?
I have good relationships with a lot of people in a lot of different places, and I will tell you at times that people at Fox have told me, encouraged me in saying that it’s not a news network or doesn’t operate like a news network. And so I just think that everyone knows what’s going on there. I try to maintain good relationships everywhere. One, because this business is actually smaller than you think. And so there are people who work at Fox who maybe didn’t four years ago and you just end up knowing a lot of people that work different places. But, two, I don’t really get emotional. And so if someone wants to call me upset, I’ll happily take that call and I’ll tell them how I feel. And I’m happy to do that. And I think that goes a long way as well.
You just sparked a massive internal investigation at Fox to find out who tells you that you’re right about them not being a news network.
There’s a lot of people that have that opinion, I think.
What was the pressure like when you were at CNN? Did you receive death threats, anything like that?
There were a lot of intense times during that job. I mean, that job is high pressure. Everything you do is under a microscope. And so at times, particularly when you go after people like Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson with that platform, you’re going to end up drawing a lot of anger, all sorts of different stuff. I think you have to have thick skin and you develop it very quickly if you don’t have it. And if you can’t develop it, then you don’t want to do that job, because that job is one where you are being criticized. After I would send the newsletter, people would think my day was done. And no, after you send the newsletter out, there are people who are upset that their story wasn’t included in the newsletter.
I have sent you angry texts saying, where the hell is my story?
Or they’re upset that a certain story was included. They’re upset about the way you wrote about something. They say you missed a story. There’s a whole bunch of stuff. And so every word you write is heavily reviewed, and you’re not only writing to a general audience, but you’re writing to basically your bosses, your potential bosses. And people in the industry have, as you as you may know, very large but often sensitive egos.
Yes, very much so.
Words can bruise.
Tucker Carlson owes you $1,000.
He does. And he has not paid. I honestly thought he would.
Can you explain to viewers why he owes you $1,000?
So after Brian was ousted from CNN, this is two years ago now, I think it was the day or the second day after that. I got a call from Tucker Carlson, and I hadn’t heard from him in a long time. But he called me, and he said that I was going to be fired next, and I said I don’t think so.
What was he basing this on?
He said he had sources, or his sources had sources. And he said, I know how this works. I’ve been fired by networks before and this is what’s going to happen and you should know about it.
Why do you think he did that?
I have no idea.
Personal pleasure?
I don’t know if he was actually thinking that maybe he did have sources. I have no idea.
He could have been earnest?
Actually, I don’t know. I don’t think it was earnest, but I think he might have thought so? I have no idea. But he said, I’ll make you a bet. If you’re not out of CNN within a year, I will pay you $1,000. And he said he would Venmo it to me. And so I literally I told him at the time, I said, I’m going to put this on my calendar. So I put it on my calendar. And a year went by and I was still at CNN, and I texted him. He didn’t respond. I sent him a request for $1,000. He didn’t respond. I re-upped the request. You can re-up only once on Venmo. And he didn’t respond. I told him I take Bitcoin if he wanted to pay in Bitcoin. He has not responded to my $1,000 request. So he owes me $1,000. He’s walking around with $1,000 he owes me. And just to be clear, if he gives it to me, I’m donating it to a group that studies hate and extremism.
Very noble of you. You should travel up to Maine to get it.
I know. I was at the RNC and I contemplated texting him, letting him know that I collect there if it would be convenient. But I’m gonna have to start charging him interest, I think.
I think so. It’s been two years.
Interest rates are high.
What do you make of the arms race in conservative media between the likes of Tucker Carlson and Fox News for audience? Do you think that he poses any real threat to Fox, his audience?
I think the fragmentation is definitely not good. If you’re Fox, you want everyone just coming to you.
The ratings are still great, but is there less buzz?
I don’t know if it creates less, the audience is still tuning in. I just think that it hurts if you don’t have all the power. And I do think that to some extent, it’s not today, but that this insurgent far-right media that’s got the Tucker Carlsons of the world in it, does like allow them to influence the narrative in a way that it wasn’t before. And I think you saw that in the Dominion documents as well, where Fox News was deeply concerned that people were going to turn the channel and go to Newsmax or somewhere else. And so I don’t think that network has the ability as much as it used to to steer the narrative. They just are kind of beholden to the audience. And the audience is being fed increasingly radicalized content. And so that’s where that network has gone right now.
I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but you started your career in conservative media.
I did, I worked for Glenn Beck.
If my producer’s research is correct, you initially founded a site called exposingleftists.com.
Way back when I was in college.
You went on to work at Campus Reform and then at the Blaze. Why did you start in conservative media?
I actually think it’s interesting because I’m always accused of being this mass leftist. And my roots, just so everyone knows, I started covering conservative media because I listened to a lot of talk radio and Fox News growing up. I probably have listened to more conservative radio than most people outside maybe the folks at Media Matters who every day for their job. But I still listen to a lot of it to keep up. And it’s a little harder now because it’s fragmented. But I was I was deeply interested in media and politics. And conservative media was the perfect intersection of those worlds. And I’ll spare the long story. But basically during the 2015, 2016 cycle, obviously Donald Trump, who is not a conservative by any means, seized control of the party and you saw a split. And I was really interested in covering that split because I’ve been thinking this forever, the random Congress people on the news who get all the attention are not the actual influencers in the Republican Party. It’s Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, those folks, Mark Levin. And so I think if you pay attention to what they’re saying, you can see definitely way before everyone else where the party is going. And I was deeply interested in the split, the civil war that happened between Glenn Beck versus Sean Hannity in 2016. And so I wanted to cover that and ended up leaving The Blaze because I couldn’t cover it very well there. And I went to Business Insider and started covering it there. And that’s where I started really covering media. I was covering right wing media from a perspective of someone who has a lot of institutional knowledge. I knew that certain people don’t like each other and Bannon is not like a fan of Drudge because there is a falling out there. There’s all these things that you pick up on over time if you listen to and pay attention to this stuff. It’s like a soap opera. And then I get accused all the time of being this leftist and it’s like, okay, I don’t actually just talk about my political opinions very often, or ever. I think the the big problem is that the Republican Party used to be far more grounded in facts, like if you look at like a Mitt Romney versus Obama race, that was a much more policy oriented race. And now it’s like most of the media is often focused on lies versus truth. And I think it’s very clear who’s lying. And I think it was very clear to Glenn Beck, for instance, back in 2016 that Donald Trump is a liar and he’s immoral and shouldn’t probably hold that office and a lot of others, too. If you look at the Never Trump cover from the National Review and they all caved. Now they love him.
Everyone at The Federalist.
They all tweeted the worst things about him. They all hated him. They said that he was hijacking the party. I’m struck that Ben Shapiro wrote a whole column saying I will never, never, never, never endorse Donald Trump. And then he’s hosting fundraisers for him now and talking about the left is going to try stealing the election or something. But he codes it like, oh, I don’t mean actually stealing ballots, but everyone gets the language. And so I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I guess for someone who wants to be in reality, I don’t feel that I can, so that’s the issue. And I think there are a lot of people probably who feel the same way. And they’re probably at The Bulwark.
Are you concerned about conservative media and their tendency to promote stolen election claims, or do you feel like the Dominion cases will keep outlets in line to any extent? Newsmax now runs a disclaimer anytime Trump says that the election was stolen. Fox News is a little bit more creative about how they go about it.
I think there’s going to be a lot of creativity, right? As long as they stay clear of defaming famous companies or people. But there are ways to say the election was stolen, because that can mean a lot of things. I mean, everyone that’s watching reads it one way, but you could argue the political elite stole it by doing whatever. And so I think you’ll see a lot of that. I don’t think that everyone’s had an epiphany and decided they’re not going to do that.
Looking forward to the next couple of months until the election, what’s the major media story that you want Status to focus on?
There’s not one, that’s the problem. Obviously the election and how news organizations are covering that election. But I also think right now you’re seeing particularly the rapid demise of linear television and what that means, I think that’s an important story. What’s happening at Paramount, it’s going to be going on until next month with layoffs, Warner Brothers Discovery is in a in a really bad spot. And David Zaslav is going to have to try to figure that out. That’s a really interesting story. And then there’s also interesting stories with Elon Musk and what he’s doing over at X and what’s going on at Google like a judge might order them to break. Will the federal government break up Google? That’s a massive story, so there’s all these seismic stories that are rippling through this industry. And I want to cover them all. And I think, again, to make my pitch a final time, this is the one spot where you can do it. There are a lot of tech newsletters out there. There’s a lot of Hollywood newsletters out there. There’s some news media newsletters out there. Status is the one spot every night you’re going to get all of it in one spot, and it’s gonna explain how they all connect. And I’m excited. There’s not a more fun time to be in media if you enjoy covering this stuff.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com
