CNN’s Brian Stelter led his “Reliable Sources” newsletter on Wednesday with the event he’s attending in London, the “Sir Harry Evans Investigative Journalism Summit,” operated by former Newsweek and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown as a tribute to her late husband. The Twitter account for it uses the boastful title "Truth Tellers."
In her American heyday, she loved trashing conservatives, that the Republicans donned “suicide vests” in opposing Obamacare, and Rush Limbaugh was a “blowhard bullfrog” who shouldn’t be popular. Nothing’s really changed with Tina, as Stelter began:
Naturally there's been a ton of conversation here about President Trump's attacks against the media. Trump "has gone for the journalistic jugular," Brown said on stage, "and when the press needs to be at its most strong, the underpinnings are at its most weak. We're seeing the consequences of the twin evils of two decades of predatory digital content theft and corporate ownership that is so bedeviled by conflicts of interest that they're proving how little pressure it takes to throw their media assets under the bus if there's a business deal in jeopardy."
This is unintentionally humorous, since Tina Brown happily piled up financial losses at the Daily Beast. Then Stelter recounted more fulminations:
On the topic of Trump, "every day is a kind of Watergate at this point," The Atlantic's editor Jeffrey Goldberg said, acknowledging the president's effectiveness at overwhelming "human cognition." Of the US in 2025, Goldberg said, "I think we live in an authoritarian or incipient authoritarian kind of climate, but we still can publish what we want to publish."
Trump is such an "incipient authoritarian" that he just granted Jeffrey Goldberg an interview at the 100-day mark, which Stelter failed to mention.
Stelter briefly mentioned his own contribution:
I pointed out that even as some media owners "fold" (see: CBS), journalists at those very outlets are showing "fight" by continuing to report fearlessly.
"Report fearlessly" is liberal code for "trashing Trump every which way."
Here's one Stelter snippet: "Donald Trump's lies about the media have seeped into the minds and the hearts of tens of millions of people, right? And they've opted out of what we consider legacy media. At the same time, there are many liberals, progressives, anti-Trump Republicans who are ticked off at the press right now for other reasons."
"Donald Trump's lies about the media have seeped into the minds and the hearts of tens of millions of people, right, and they've opted out of what we consider legacy media." - @brianstelter @cnn @jonsopel #SirHarrySummit pic.twitter.com/qhobyCOSX6
— Truth Tellers (@sirharrysummit) May 7, 2025
He continued: “The word ‘fight’ makes me uncomfortable, inherently, right? We’re talking about fight or fold. I don’t view myself as a fighter. I don’t think most reporters who are covering politics or media think they’re in the middle of a fight. And yet -- as Marty Baron famously said, ‘we’re not at war, we’re at work’ – if one side’s at war and the other side is not at war, the other sides loses. A pacifist always loses in a war. And so there is this incredibly difficult dynamic the press is in, because this time it’s not just words from Trump, it’s actions.”
If this event wasn't such a leftist bubble, there would be audience laughter at the notion that the press hasn't been at war with Trump since at least the middle of 2016, seeking not just his political ruin, but his financial ruin, and hoping for a long prison sentence.
That's not to mention laughter at the self-congratulatory liberal concept that the anti-Trump forces are always the "truth tellers," and that everyone who supported Trump is far too susceptible to "lies."
