Writing Sunday night for Oliver Darcy’s website Status (which, in addition to threatening to cancel NewsBusters’s subscription, hurled a series of smears Friday at the Media Research Center and conservative media writ large), Natalie Korach (pictured right) shoveled a series of anonymous jabs and loaded declarations to assert NewsNation is MAGA TV simply to please Donald Trump and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
At the end of the day, though, NewsNation’s moniker of “news for all Americans” is the kind of thing that makes the skins of Darcy, Korach, and colleague Jon Passastino crawl.
Korach doubled down on Darcy’s December 15 screed insisting Katie Pavlich — a former longtime Fox News contributor and Townhall editor — was brought on as a case of conservative affirmative action (and thus not on her talent) to ensure Trump and Carr approval of parent company Nexstar’s acquisition of Tegna (the TV arm of Gannett, USA Today’s parent company).
In her piece “NewsNation’s Audience of One,” Korach claimed NewsNation “has visibly tilted right, staffing up on former Fox News personalities, in what insiders believe to be an effort to smooth its expansion plans.”
Of course, no one would put their name to their backstabbing and Korach herself played dutiful hack purposefully leaving out former liberal network journalists such as Chris Cillizza (CNN), Chris Cuomo (ABC and CNN), Geraldo Rivera (ABC and Fox News), Elizabeth Vargas (ABC), Mike Viqueira (NBC), or NewsNation liberals such as A. Scott Bodlen Kurt Bardella, Lindsey Granger (former Melissa Harris-Perry producer), or Chris Hahn to name a few.
After laying out the details of Nexstar’s proposed purchase of Tegna requiring multiple signoffs, Korach said this “regulatory squeeze” to treat conservatives like human beings “is now being felt actuely inside...NewsNation”:
Current and former employees say the network, long marketed as an “unbiased” alternative to traditional cable news, has pivoted rightward in what some view as a transparent effort to curry favor with Trump’s FCC–at the expense of the channel’s overall performance–and smooth the path for a merger that otherwise faces steep hurdles.
“A lot of people within the network believe that the network has gone hard right to appeal to Trump and Brendan Carr,” one former employee told Status.
Korach said “[t]he most glaring example of the network’s MAGA-friendly pivot” was Pavlich joining the fray.
“But to some internally, Pavlich’s hire was an unmistakable sign that the network’s centrist posture has given way to something more closely resembling a Fox News knockoff, particularly as Nexstar seeks regulatory approval for its Tegna deal,” Korach asserted using more anonymous smears, adding Carr tweeting his congratulations was proof of a quid-pro-quo and “internal suspicions” Pavlich’s hire was “designed” for a specific purpose.
Someone find Natalie a white board so she can channel Charlie Day’s character in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
After scoffing at her ratings for “reliably Trump-friendly and conservative commentary-heavy” programming, she found a current colleague of Pavlich’s at NewsNation to scoff that her behavior was been “predictable” in soiling the network with “pro-Trump garbage.”
Here was where Korach chose to be dishonest in citing NewsNation hires as Fox-heavy, ignoring how Stirewalt is extremely anti-Trump and not at all MAGA:
But Pavlich is hardly an outlier. In recent years, NewsNation has increasingly leaned on a roster of hosts with conservative bonafides, including Leland Vittert...The network has repeatedly hired former Fox News talent, with Connell McShane, Laura Ingle, and Chris Stirewalt all now on the payroll.
But even if NewsNation is partially paying lip service to occupying the center, the recent changes have been notable. Elsewhere, Ashleigh Banfield–who Pavlich replaced as she transitioned into leading the network’s true crime vertical...drew widespread criticism for controversial reporting last week that claimed Nancy Guthrie’s son-in-law was a “prime suspect” in her disappearance[.]
The rest of the piece included more ratings takedowns, suggesting the network’s printing money to be tossed down the drain.
Korach wrapped with spin to appease liberals incensed a conservative joined primetime alongside newsmen and women like Vargas, Vittert, and Weber and liberal Cuomo:
The network’s rightward drift has felt calculated, according to those who spoke to Status, arguing that executives have a vested interest in avoiding antagonizing Trump as his administration holds leverage over its expansion ambitions.
(....)
As the former NewsNation employee said, “Trump obviously needs the media to express fealty and help him tell his narrative, or get behind it, and they seem willing to do that.”
Simply put, it seems like a few people with axes to grind against NewsNation and Pavlich made a few calls to try and dismiss the latter’s resume.
By the way, is anyone in the liberal media going to mention what’s going on in their own part of the country with the largest sewage spill in U.S. history or is Pavlich just going to have to do it all herself?
