Helter Stelter: America’s most dangerous propagandist returns to CNN



Propaganda comes in two forms. The first manipulates the public into accepting a particular political viewpoint or persuades them to do something that benefits the ruling class. A prime example is John Legend’s Pfizer ads, which ran in 2023 and 2024, encouraging people to stay "up to date" on their COVID mRNA boosters.

The second type involves what CNN’s returning propagandist Brian Stelter routinely does — acting as an authority to vilify and demean critics of the ruling class narrative. In line with the COVID hysteria analogy, Stelter frequently targeted critics like Alex Berenson in 2021.

What is truth, and what is disinformation? That’s for the high priests like Brian Stelter to decide.

This second type of propaganda is often more dangerous than the first. It’s the kind preferred by the so-called champions of the “free press,” and Stelter excels at it. For years, Stelter has told his audience and the American people that anyone with views opposing the regime spreads mal-, mis-, and disinformation. In his esteemed opinion, the punishment for this is cancellation from public life.

After a brief period of introspection following the Discovery merger, CNN’s staff shrugged off the constraints of Chris Licht’s oppressive leadership and are once again free to embrace their bias and partisanship. Is it any wonder they’ve brought back their chief propagandist, Stelter? After all, there’s an election to win.

How did Stelter rise to become America’s most dangerous propagandist? It all started with a newsletter and a blog.

Making of a narrative guardian

Stelter grew up a media nerd. He had a strong interest in nightly news and its anchors. He turned this interest into TV Newser, a blog he started from his University of Maryland dorm room as a teenager. The blog quickly became a must-read after Stelter began breaking media stories ahead of more experienced journalists. He sold the blog but continued writing it for years.

After graduating, Stelter began working for the New York Times covering the media. His big break came in 2013 when he took over CNN’s long-running media criticism show, “Reliable Sources.”

As the 2016 election unfolded and its aftermath played out, Stelter became the most vocal cheerleader for administrative state and media narratives, wielding the power and prestige of his role as a media referee. From the debunked Russian collusion story to COVID extremism and even Hunter Biden’s laptop, no one defended the party line and attacked critics as consistently as Stelter. No one.

His unwavering commitment to protecting the establishment at all costs may give the impression that he’s comically unaware. But he isn’t. As Shakespeare said, “All the world is a stage,” and Stelter clearly knows and relishes his role on it.

Stelter’s main role is to keep mainstream media in line, ensuring that they stick to the approved narrative. He is a master at this, consistently playing the concern troll against anyone presenting alternatives to the accepted truth, even relying on figures whose credibility with the public is in ruins.

Enter Dan Rather, the disgraced former host of CBS Evening News. After Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, Stelter frequently brought Rather onto his show to discuss “truth.” In 2018, Stelter even had Rather explain how journalists needed to provide “truth” to counter “Trump’s fantasyland.” That’s right — Stelter invited the man fired from CBS for fabricating National Guard documents to speak on the importance of “truth.”

Truth doesn’t matter to Stelter. Scoring points on the opposition does.

Stelter has never hesitated to defend a regime narrative, no matter how false. When Hillary Clinton’s campaign used the Democratic Party to pay a law firm that hired an opposition research team to create a fake dossier written by a former MI-6 spy alleging “Russian collusion,” Stelter became one of its biggest defenders.

In 2020, when the media and deep state pushed the narrative that the violent riots across America’s cities were “mostly peaceful protests,” Stelter did what he does best — discredit those showing the truth. He portrayed them as extremists trying to deceive the public, like when he attacked Sean Hannity for using days-old footage to make his point.

When the media and Big Tech colluded to protect Joe Biden from allegations contained in his son’s laptop weeks before the 2020 election, Stelter and his protégé Oliver Darcy quickly came to his defense. Stelter tweeted, “'Over the past 24 hours, the Hunter Biden narrative pushed by President Trump and his allies in right-wing media has started to unravel,’ @oliverdarcy writes in the latest edition of @ReliableSources.”

Yes, the media did their job protecting the Biden family by “unraveling” the “narrative,” but they didn’t unravel the truth that the laptop and its contents were real. Stelter did what he was born to do: influence the outcome of the election for his side.

The devil in disinformation

Fast-forward to 2022. After the Discovery-Warner Brothers merger, and under pressure from libertarian board member and former Trump donor John Malone, CNN fired Stelter. This left a vacuum for the type of activist “journalism” that had become synonymous with Stelter. Left-wing activists, like Dan Froomkin at Press Watch, lamented the decision. Froomkin cried, “By firing Brian Stelter, CNN is capitulating to disinformation rather than fighting it.”

That key word appears again — disinformation. Like a talisman, it summons the supplicants of the progressive order to the holy fight. But what is truth, and what is disinformation? That’s for the high priests like Brian Stelter to decide.

After spending a little over 100 weeks in the wilderness, the prophet returned to CNN, finding a sea of shifting anti-speech norms that his past activism had laid the groundwork for.

Now in 2024, governments have ramped up their crackdowns on free speech. The U.K.’s new Labour government is emptying prisons to jail social media offenders, while Brazil has shut down access to X, formerly Twitter. Anti-speech totalitarianism that would make Big Brother proud is on the rise.

The fervor to suppress speech isn’t confined to other so-called “liberal democracies.” It’s surging here in the American republic. Just this week, former U.S. senator and perennial failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for jailing those who spread “disinformation,” First Amendment be damned.

Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation making it a crime to “knowingly distribute an ad or other election communications that contain materially deceptive content — including deepfakes.” This isn’t just about regulating or banning deepfakes, which may seem reasonable to most. But what exactly is the “materially deceptive content” Newsom refers to? Differences in how government should be run? Who gets to decide?

Brian Stelter’s unwavering dedication to protecting those who seek to amass power by limiting Americans' access to speech has brought us to this pretty pass. He has profited greatly from his role as the gatekeeper of “truth.” His actions have paved the way for ever-increasing restrictions on speech throughout the so-called free world.

So in a few years, as you stand at the gate of the gulag for posting one too many memes, remember who sent you there. Then, if they’ll let you, raise a glass of potato vodka and salute his name.

Jeff Bezos sends Washington Post staffers unwelcome message after they complain about their white male leaders



Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is not caving to the outrage mob within his own newsroom.

Earlier this month, Sally Buzbee abruptly resigned as executive editor of the Washington Post. In a staff meeting held after her departure, CEO and publisher Will Lewis told disgruntled staffers the newspaper needed to embrace a new vision and fresh direction.

'To be sure, it can't be business as usual at The Post. The world is evolving rapidly and we do need to change as a business.'

"We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can't sugarcoat it anymore," Lewis said. "So I've had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path, sourcing talent that I have worked with that are the best of the best."

The changes sent shockwaves through the Post's newsroom. One of the chief complaints among staffers, according to Vanity Fair, is the diversity makeup of the newspaper's leadership.

One staffer even complained that now "four white men" would be running the Post.

In the weeks since, there has been news of "chaos" and "anger" in the Post's newsroom, reports that "morale has fallen off a cliff," questions of whether Lewis would remain at the helm, demands for Lewis' resignation, and multiple attempts to smear Lewis publicly — including by Post journalists. The Post's newsroom "is almost uniformly horrified" by the situation, one staffer said.

But all of the gnashing of teeth apparently won't force Lewis out of his job.

On Tuesday, Bezos — who purchased the Post more than a decade ago — emailed the Post's top leaders and told them the status quo is not working.

He reportedly carbon-copied Lewis on the email, signaling support for his CEO.

"I know you've already heard this from Will, but I wanted to also weigh in directly: the journalistic standards and ethics at The Post will not change," Bezos wrote. "To be sure, it can't be business as usual at The Post. The world is evolving rapidly and we do need to change as a business."

— (@)

There is an important reason Bezos reaffirmed the directional changes and his support for Lewis: The Post lost $77 million last year and, since 2020, half of its audience.

A successful businessman like Bezos knows those figures indicate something is critically wrong and dire change is needed.

But it's also why Bezos installed Lewis and continues to support him: Lewis led the Wall Street Journal through a period of significant revenue and readership growth from 2014 through 2020.

Results speak, the diversity-demands of rank-and-file staffers be damned.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Washington Post, NY Times issue major corrections over story that Rudy Giuliani's lawyer called 'totally false'



The Washington Post and New York Times issued major retractions on Saturday after initially reporting that Rudy Giuliani and One America News were warned by the FBI they were targets of a major Russian disinformation campaign during the 2020 presidential election season.

What did the newspapers report?

The Post reported on Thursday the FBI warned Giuliani in late 2019 "he was the target of a Russian influence operation aimed at circulating falsehoods intended to damage President [Joe] Biden."

The Post also reported that OAN received a similar warning.

The warning was part of an extensive effort by the bureau to alert members of Congress and at least one conservative media outlet, One America News, that they faced a risk of being used to further Russia's attempt to influence the election's outcome, said several current and former U.S. officials. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains highly sensitive. Giuliani received the FBI's warning while deeply involved with former president Donald Trump's 2020 reelection campaign and related activities in Ukraine to surface unflattering or incriminating information about the Biden family.

Meanwhile, the Times claimed Giuliani had received a "defensive briefing" in which FBI agents were "cautioning him that some of the information he was pushing on the Biden family was tainted by Russian intelligence's efforts to spread disinformation."

Giuliani flatly denied the allegations.

Giuliani's attorney, Robert Costello, told CNN, "This story is totally false according to Mayor Giuliani. He never received any such briefing."

What did the retraction say?

The Post issued a retraction acknowledging that neither Giuliani nor OAN received warnings from the FBI as the newspaper initially claimed.

At the top of the story, an editor's note reads:

Correction: An earlier version of this story, published Thursday, incorrectly reported that One America News was warned by the FBI that it was the target of a Russian influence operation. That version also said the FBI had provided a similar warning to Rudolph W. Giuliani, which he has since disputed. This version has been corrected to remove assertions that OAN and Giuliani received the warnings.

The Times, on the other hand, initially edited out their claims about Giuliani having received a warning from the FBI without including an editor's note explaining the correction.

However, the newspaper later added the following note at the bottom of its story, "An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing."

Update: NYT has added a proper correction. https://t.co/VcddrQABl8

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) 1619893601.0

A spokesperson for the New York Times claimed editors delayed including a correction notice because they needed to deliberate "correction language."

"We decided to update the story as quickly as possible to stop perpetuating the incorrect information while we reviewed correction language," the spokesperson said.