Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center hates CNN so obsessively that it takes creepy, perverse and immature glee in the alleged misfortunes of its employees. We've noted how there was basically a street party at MRC HQ when channel head Jeff Zucker was fired and when Brian Stelter lost his hosting gig (and fits of rage when Stelter got a new job at Harvard), and much chortling when Don Lemon was supposedly "demoted" from his prime-time show to a retooled morning show. Curtis Houck tried to make up stuff regarding another CNN personality in an Oct. 6 post:
Matt Lauer anyone?
The Daily Mail reported in an exclusive late Wednesday that weekday morning CNN Newsroom co-host and former Obama official Jim Sciutto has been sent off on a leave of absence from the struggling network so he can “address personal issues” stemming from a mysterious trip to Amsterdam with a producer earlier this year after having been covered the war in Ukraine.
“CNN mainstay Jim Sciutto has been off air after network bosses ordered him to address a ‘personal situation’ stemming from a 'serious fall' he suffered while in Amsterdam earlier this year,” saidDaily Mail reporter Paul Farrell. He explained that, after having co-hosted Monday morning’s CNN Newsroom with Poppy Harlow, he hasn’t been seen since.
Farrell added that “a media source has told” them Sciutto “is now on ‘personal leave’” and “CNN has not responded to requests for comment.”
Houck name-dropping Lauer was effectively an accusation that Sciutto had engaged in some sort of untoward sexual misbehavior -- something for which he has presented absolutely no evidence and something not even hinted at in the Daily Mail story. Sciutto returned to CNN a few weeks later, suggesting that whatever "personal issues" he may have had were addressed during his leave. The MRC has yet to acknowledge Sciutto's return.
If Sciutto has not, in fact, been credibly accused of sexual misbehavior as Houck snarkily suggested, Houck probably needs to retract that baseless allegation lest he and the MRC find themselves on the wrong end of a defamation lawsuit.
Houck served up even more chortling in an Oct. 28 post at the prospect of more CNN layoffs:
In both a memo to staff and a story about the network on CNBC.com, CNN boss Chris Licht marked six months this week with the struggling liberal network by announcing he’s been tasked with cost cuts and layoffs as, according to CNBC, CNN’s profit “is set to drop blow $1 billion this year” and Warner Bros. Discovery is aiming to layoff 1,000 people from its 40,000-workforce.
In objectively welcome news, CNBC also revealed Licht will continue to move CNN back toward reality and away from what Licht called “the quick sugar high of ratings and outrage.”
Licht said in a memo Wednesday that he’s conducted “formal business reviews with senior staff to identify areas where we should make changes, investments, and reductions” and, as part of that, he’ll “reduce or eliminate areas that aren’t core to our mission.”
Then came the key lines as Licht said “that work will accelerate” in “the next several weeks” and, to accomplish that and “factor” in the state of the global economy, there will be “noticeable change to this organization...affect[ing] people, budgets, and projects.” All told, Licht said he hopes “these decisions” are “made by the end of the year.”
[...]
Not surprisingly, Licht has found winning the trust of employees to be a challenge with many still worshipping his predecessor, Jeff Zucker, who was more or less the network puppetmaster.
The MRC loves to tag the Jewish Zucker as a "puppetmaster" -- an anti-Semitic trope.
It took both Nicholas Fondacaro and Geoffrey Dickens to take even more lame shots at Lemon in a Nov. 1 post as his morning-show stint began:
Don Lemon will be starting his totally-not-a-demotion stint on CNN’s revamped morning show CNN This Morning this morning. So we at NewsBusters thought it would be nice to take a stroll down memory lane and look back at Lemon’s heinous remarks that the network would prefer were memory-holed.
This was joined by a "brief montage of Lemon’s primetime blathering" from Bill D'Agostino. So it actually took three MRC employees to spew this nastiness. This childishness and gossip is what passes for "media research" at the MRC these days.
