CNN’s Brian Stelter Sparks Vigorous Debate on Media Twitter By Asking Why There Isn’t a ‘New York Times of the Right’

Ken MeyerOct 10th, 2021, 3:26 pm
 

CNN’s Brian Stelter sparked a number of diverse and contentious opinions when he suggested that a “New York Times of the right” might help with American distrust toward the press.

Stelter floated the idea during a Reliable Sources segment during which he focused on Gallup’s new poll showing American public trust in the media near an all-time low. As Stelter hypothesized on the broader connotations of Gallup’s numbers, he went on a tangent about “repeaters” who seize on news stories in order to attack their political enemies without adding any kind of intellectual value to the original story.

The CNN host argued that Fox News pundits “repeat” stories more often than they report on them, and arrived at the conclusion that “everyone trusts some sources [in the media], but distrust other sources.” It was to that point that Stelter asked “why is it the right wing media outlets do so little reporting?”

Why do they employ so few reporters and so many commentators and columnists and opinion writers? Why aren’t there massive American newsrooms dedicated to journalism from a conservative point of view? A reality-based conservative point of view? Why isn’t there a New York Times of the right? Why doesn’t it exist? Because the audience doesn’t want that? Or is it that the audience isn’t being given a chance to support it?

Stelter’s fanciful idea wound up sparking a great deal of conversation on Twitter. Some found it absurd of Stelter to attach a political ideology to the Times.

Others answered Stelter’s question by arguing that the right doesn’t actually want their own fact-based equivalent to the Times:

And then, there were those on the right who called Stelter out. Conservative reactors took his comment as an admission that the Times leans left, and they also argued that the right-wing media deals with facts that the left chooses to ignore or downplay:

Watch above, via CNN.

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