Oliver Darcy Blasts CNN’s Coverage of Trump’s Inauguration – Jake Tapper Was Only ‘Physically Present’
Former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy criticized the network for its coverage of President Donald Trump’s election win and his Monday inauguration on a podcast Friday.
Darcy said that the days of seeing CNN anchors hold Trump to account had passed with the network now under the direction of chairman and CEO Mark Thompson.
On WNYC’s On the Media podcast, Darcy spoke to co-host Micah Loewinger about why CNN’s most prominent names handled Trump’s inauguration last week the way they did.
“There’s a very stark difference in the way CNN is covering Donald Trump and politics compared to the way it did under a previous owner,” Darcy said. He added:
One of the noticeable things, for instance, during inauguration coverage was that none of the CNN anchors pointed out that Donald Trump is the first convicted felon to take that office. They didn’t point out that he was twice impeached. So you had a lot of right-wing extremists and a lot of right-wing conspiracy theorists stuffed in the Rotunda. People like Tucker Carlson, an extremist, Marjorie Taylor Greene, an extremist, Robert F Kennedy Jr, a conspiracy theorist, on and on it went. In the previous iteration of CNN, you would have seen that called out pretty forcefully. That acting rotunda for years after January 6th, you have a lot of people who pushed the big lie, who even in Tucker Carlson’s case, suggested that that insurrection was a false flag, that you have them now gathered at the citadel of American democracy, welcoming Donald Trump back to power. And Jake Tapper was pretty tame.
Loewinger described Tapper’s coverage of Trump, which he once described as biting, as “limp.”
Darcy replied, “That used to be the Jake Tapper that CNN viewers knew, and I think CNN viewers liked.” He continued:
And watching this second term begin. Those anchors were still physically present on my screen, like Jake Tapper was still there, but it felt like a very different Jake Tapper. And that’s not an accident. That’s the direction that a new network chief, Mark Thompson, wants to take the network. Jeff Zucker, who was the network chief when AT&T owned the company, he really encouraged anchors to be relentless, to be vocal about the lies that Donald Trump was pushing. Mark Thompson had his anchors gathered for a Sunday afternoon meeting, and he made it very clear that he did not want to focus on those things. He wanted to look forward. He said that the network should be open-minded about Trump and showing a little deference. And it’s just a very different CNN in tone than it was four years ago.
Darcy concluded, “Those days where you saw viral clips of CNN anchors really holding Trump’s feet to the fire, those days have largely come to an end.”
Listen above via On the Media.
