Back in June, AFN reported ratings-challenged CNN was being led by new boss Chris Licht, who planned to move away from opinion toward straight news. That meant the network’s on-air hosts were being scrutinized for their left-wing bias, and Stelter and his “Reliable Sources” show were at the top of that list, according to an Axios story.
Curtis Houck of Media Research Center says Stelter's firing is a “shot across the bow” for other Democrat-defending, Republican-hating personalities. It also backs up the summer news by in Axios that Licht has new plans for CNN, he says.
“They recognize that the CNN that they've purchased from Time Warner,” Houck says, “is not the same CNN that people grew up watching in the 80’s and 90’s.”
Stelter has hosted "Reliable Sources" for nine years but the show is being cancelled after a 30-year run, NPR reported this week.
Stelter was mentioned in an AFN media story last week, when he did a 180-degree turn on the Hunter Biden laptop controversy. He called it a “real problem for the Bidens” after dismissing it in 2020 as a “classic example of the right-wing media machine.”
According to Houck, after years of watching the media analyst fall over himself to defend Democrats and criticize rival Fox News, MRC wishes Stelter well in the future.
“We would like to see him land somewhere,” Houck says, “so we still can make fun of him.”
