On CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday, host Brian Stelter brought on leftist comedian (and former Current TV host) John Fugelsang to discuss the legacy of Jon Stewart. Fugelsang suggested that America is dominated by liberals, but some don’t want to admit it.
To be precise, Fugelsang claimed a 2012 Gallup poll on abortion made his case for him that 77 percent of Americans are pro-choice:
On Sunday, CNN’s Reliable Sources hosted former SEAL Team Six member Don Mann to discuss NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams’ questionable claim that he was embedded with them at the start of the Iraq war. Speaking to host Brian Stelter, Mann resoundingly refuted Williams’ story and said “For a reporter to be embedded with SEAL Team Six or any tier one unit, that just doesn't happen…The last thing in the world we would want is have a reporter sitting in a helicopter embedded with one of these units. It would hurt the United States in many ways.”
CNN’s Reliable Sources devoted most of its show Sunday to the Brian Williams scandal, but host Brian Stelter made sure that Williams defenders in the liberal elite, from Joe Klein to Bill Moyers, were quoted and discussed. Stelter didn’t have interview or quote any conservative critics of Williams.
Stelter quoted Bill Moyers the PBS omnipresence to former network reporter and analyst Jeff Greenfield, now with The Daily Beast. It said "Brian Williams' helicopter lie is nothing compared to the misinformation spewed by U.S. press in lead-up to Iraq War."
Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released their nominations for the 87th Academy Awards and many have criticized the academy for shutting out the film “Selma” from the four biggest acting categories. With the so-called controversy over the film’s lack of nominations continuing, on Sunday, CNN’s Reliable Sources brought on actor Gbenga Akinnagbe, star of HBO’s “The Wire” and Fox’s “24" to slam Hollywood as lacking diversity. Akinnagbe argued that Hollywood is “very similar to Congress. We get these rules and regulations that benefit one class because we have a Congress full of millionaires. That's pretty much how Hollywood tends to work.”
On CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday, University of Virginia student Alex Pinkleton revealed how Rolling Stone's Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who wrote the disputed Rolling Stone story on alleged rape at the college, acted more like an "advocate" than a reporter as she interviewed people for the article. Pinkleton, a friend of the woman who made the rape accusation, asserted that Erdely "did have an agenda, and part of that agenda was showing how monstrous fraternities themselves as an institution are, and blaming the administration for a lot of the sexual assaults."
For the second time in two years, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria has been accused of plagiarism, for using other people’s words and claiming them to be his own, during his Fareed Zakaria GPS program. Despite the seriousness of the charges leveled against Zakaria, CNN’s Brian Stelter did his best to protect his colleague during his Reliable Sources program on Sunday. The CNN host defended Zakaria from plagiarism charges and insisted that his program merely “made some attribution mistakes.”
On Sunday's Reliable Sources, CNN's Brian Stelter touted a disgraced former representative as a non-partisan pundit and as an expert on media bias: "Now, I could bring in two partisan commentators now to argue about the media, but I'd rather from someone who's been in the glare of the news media – someone who's all too familiar with what happens when you go from darling to bad boy – then, maybe, back and forth. That's former Congressman Anthony Weiner."
When last seen in coverage at NewsBusters, Anjem Choudary was sparring with Sean Hannity while claiming that ISIS atrocities are a Western "falsehood" and that Islamic Sharia law will be implemented "in the whole world one day."
Before getting to his latest stunt on CNN's Reliable Sources program with host Brian Stelter, it's important to provide some context, simply because Choudary, described at Wikipedia as a "Muslim social and political activist," has already said that "if you had a sense of humor, maybe you would have laughed" at how he conducted the mic check before his interview.
Dan Rather, former anchor of the CBS Evening News, appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources to harshly criticize those in Congress calling for the U.S. to take military action against the terrorist group ISIS.
Speaking to anchor Brian Stelter on Sunday, August 24, Rather proclaimed that he will only listen to those who advocate boots on the ground “if you tell me you are prepared to send your son, your daughter, your grandson, your granddaughter to that war of which you are beating the drums.” [See video below.]
On Sunday's Reliable Sources on CNN, Dr. Gail Saltz blasted Fox News contributor Dr. Keith Ablow for his jab at Michelle Obama's weight: "To be criticizing people, kind of, willy-nilly is – I don't think meets the Hippocratic Oath." She played up how Dr. Ablow previously hinted that Vice President Biden might have dementia, and claimed that the psychiatrist violated "American psychiatric guidelines, which is not to diagnose someone that you have ever met." [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
Host Brian Stelter wondered if there's "this urge to be entertaining; to be provocative; to be outrageous." Dr. Saltz asserted that she tries "very hard every day to resist that," and that "any professional wants to express their opinion that has nothing to do with medicine, they have to carefully take off their doctor hat, and make it clear that they're doing so." The CNN guest should take her own advice, as she diagnosed conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh as a "bully" in October 2009:
Following the death of Michael Brown and the ensuing protests in Ferguson, Missouri, one topic of conversation that has drawn a lot of attention is whether or not Al Sharpton can serve as both an activist and be the host of a daily MSNBC program.
Appearing on CNN’s Reliable Sources, Marc Lamont Hill, CNN contributor and HuffPost Live host, defended Sharpton’s dual roles and argued that “Al Sharpton is no different than Sean Hannity. He's no different than Glenn Beck was. He's no different than many pundits who had TV shows.” [See video below.]
On Monday's This Hour, CNN's Michaela Pereira acted as an apologist for the student and/or faculty-led protests in recent weeks that forced out several high-profile speakers from participating in commencement ceremonies: "Isn't it a rite of passage to question authority and to question things and protest things in college? Isn't that what those college years are about – to take a stand?"
Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter also specifically lauded the Haverford College students whose protest led to the withdrawal of their commencement speaker: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]