Oliver Darcy on a cowed mainstream press
"It’s highly alarming how news institutions and Big Tech are behaving in response to an autocratic wannabe."
A note from Aaron: Publishing a newsletter five mornings a week means you have to plan ahead. It also means that evergreen editions sometimes get pushed back when breaking news intervenes. Such was the case with this Q&A with Oliver Darcy, which we originally planned to publish a couple weeks ago. Darcy had a lot of thoughtful things to say about the current media landscape, so I’m publishing it today as a weekend bonus for subscribers. I hope you enjoy it, and if you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one to support our work.
One of the biggest differences between Trump’s second term and his first is the extent to which he’s cowed the elite press this time around.
CNN recently pushed out Jim Acosta, the network’s most prominent Trump critic. Jeff Bezos has diminished the Washington Post by steering the publication in a more Trump-friendly direction. Patrick Soon-Shiong is trying to turn the LA Times into a print version of Fox News. ABC’s parent company attempted to avoid the president’s wrath by forking over $16 million to settle a ridiculous nuisance lawsuit brought by the Trump campaign. CBS’s parent company is reportedly poised to do the same thing in response to separate but equally silly litigation. And we already know that big tech oligarchs are in the tank for Trump.
Against that grim backdrop, supporting independent political media is more important right now than ever. And perhaps the best independent media reporter out there these days is Oliver Darcy, author of Status.
Darcy left CNN to go independent last year. He now works tirelessly to take his readers behind the scenes of the media they consume. For instance, he recently published a scoop about how Trump’s new FCC chair, Brendan Carr, is sparing Fox Corporation from regulatory scrutiny, even while he goes after other big networks.
While reinstating petitions against CBS, NBC, and ABC, Carr conspicuously declined to revive a challenge against Fox. Each of the petitions had been dismissed in the final days of Joe Biden's administration by outgoing FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel, who seemingly hoped that wiping the slate clean across all networks would prevent her successor from selectively weaponizing the office against Trump’s media adversaries.
If that was the strategy, though, it failed spectacularly.
We connected with Darcy to get his take on big outlets obeying in advance, his advice to young journalists trying to break in to political media, and what he makes of Acosta’s ouster at CNN.
“He was not swimming in the direction that CNN wanted to go,” he told us. “He could have done a midnight show, but it was pretty clear that he had fallen out of favor because of his coverage of Donald Trump.”
“I know from my reporting that people from the Trump team have complained to CNN about Jim Acosta.”
A full transcript of Darcy’s conversation with Public Notice contributor Thor Benson, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Thor Benson
What’s your read on big outlets like ABC and the Washington Post debasing themselves to get on Trump’s good side?
Oliver Darcy
It’s highly alarming how news institutions and Big Tech are behaving in response to an autocratic wannabe. It’s pretty clear that Donald Trump rules as a schoolyard bully. I don’t think the correct response to that is to appease and bend the knee. When you’re dealing with a bully, the best thing that can happen is for everyone to rise up and stand their ground.
When people stand up, it becomes clear that the masses have power. But when everyone folds, that empowers the schoolyard bully. That’s largely what you’re seeing across this landscape. Whether it’s Meta or Amazon or Bezos, it’s clear that Trump runs the show. That’s incredibly worrying. The whole job of the Fourth Estate is to hold the powerful accountable — not to bend the knee.
Thor Benson
You wrote recently about your former colleague Jim Acosta exiting CNN. What do you think the departure of the network’s most prominent Trump critic says about where things are headed there?
Oliver Darcy