If Disney CEO Bob Iger wasn’t an unabashed wokester, heads would be rolling at ABC News and anchor David Muir’s $8 million a year salary would be under serious review.
A news organization’s value is predicated on its perceived credibility and these days there’s legions more Americans who know better than to trust Disney-owned ABC News after watching what many believe was the network’s rigged presidential debate earlier this week. While many corporate media journalists dismiss criticisms of “moderators” Muir and Linsey Davis as being unfounded conspiracy theories peddled by Trump supporters and the “conservative” media, even once powerful Democrats Mark Penn and Andrew Stein have criticized ABC News’ handling of the debate.
Penn, a former top aide to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, has gone so far as to call for a law firm to conduct an independent review of ABC News’ debate preparation. CNN’s Jake Tapper has also criticized ABC News for its kid gloves treatment of Kamala Harris.
“Time and again we find that supposedly neutral democratic institutions have been corrupted by bias. Debate moderators must check their biases and seek to be scrupulously fair, or they shouldn’t do the job,” Penn and Stein said in their Wall Street Journal op-ed. “They should observe strict rules and come from a variety of networks. Most important, they shouldn’t interfere but rather trust voters to make their own decisions. ABC undermined the system for everyone.”
It’s best to be wary of Penn, who knows quite a bit about dirty politics and deceptions. New York columnist Jonathan Chait in November 2018 dismissed Penn as “as an old Clinton sleazeball” in wake of Penn saying nice things about Trump. If former client Hillary Clinton opted to share her insights and experiences cheating, lying, and orchestrating political dirty tricks, she’d have enough material to publish at least three books, each longer than War and Peace.
In 2016, former interim DNC chair Donna Brazile was fired as a CNN contributor after it was revealed that Brazile sent questions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in advance of a CNN debate and a town hall. Brazile was subsequently hired by FOX, which spoke poorly of that network’s ethics.
U.S. media outlets were once overseen by grownups who were zealous about ensuring their publications and broadcast outlets were perceived as being fair and nonpartisan. Admittedly, the U.S. media has long had a liberal bent, but there was at least an effort to guard against it. The Columbia Journalism Review was among the influences that motivated me to pursue a career in journalism. When I read the industry publication in the 70s, CJR was aggressive calling out journalism bias and wrongdoing. CJR’s focus these days is making corporate journalists feel good about themselves.
What should have Iger in a tizzy is that ABC News opted to showcase its institutional bias, which I highlighted in my previous post. A responsible network would have gone to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of unfairness, particularly given some really bad optics to begin with. As reported by the New York Times, the Disney executive who oversees ABC News is Dana Walden, who is very close with Kamala Harris, a friendship that dates to 1994. Their respective husbands, Matt Walden and Doug Emhoff, have known each other since the 1980s.
Instead, Muir and Davis fed Harris questions the vice president expected and basically cheered Harris on as she recited her carefully scripted evasive answers, never once calling out Harris’ myriad deceptions and lies. Meanwhile, Trump was “fact checked” at least five times, in one instance not entirely accurately.
When a news organization becomes the news for its questionable reporting and ethics, that’s a major institutional failure.
Muir anchors ABC News’ nightly newscasts, and Davis reads the teleprompter on Sunday nights. According to published reports, Muir is paid as much as $8 million a year, and he’s very influential in the news division. For that kind of money, Iger should be demanding that Muir deliver unblemished performances that enhance ABC News’ brand, rather than embroil it in controversy.
One of the most blistering and widely circulated criticisms of Muir and Davis was spontaneously delivered by Megyn Kelly, formerly of FOX and NBC News. Notably, Kelly has been critical of Trump over the years, and in 2015 when she moderated a presidential debate hosted by FOX, Trump mercilessly attacked her.
During a presidential debate, Kelly pressed Trump about misogynistic, sexist comments he made in the past, such as calling some women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.”
Trump slammed Kelly, saying her questions were “ridiculous” and “off-base.”
“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes,” Trump told then CNN anchor Don Lemon. “Blood coming out of her wherever.”
Kelly later moved on to NBC where she was forced out by the woke mob for her conservative views, the final straw being when she questioned the harm of dressing in blackface on Halloween. NBC reportedly paid the outstanding balance on Kelly’s contract, a figure that amounted to roughly $30 million. At the time of the separation, Ms. Kelly was in the middle of a three-year, $69 million contract with the network.
Shareholders of Comcast, which owns NBC, and Disney should know what Kelly is up to these days. According to a recent Semafor article, Kelly is nearly as popular as she was when she worked at FOX and NBC. Kelly’s show is one of the most listened-to programs on SiriusXM, but it’s also one of the top ten podcasts in the country and its viewership exceeds some mainstream news outlets on YouTube.
The Megyn Kelly Show’s YouTube channel, which has 2.3 million subscribers, had 116.8 million views in July — more views than CBS News (83 million), Sky News (87 million), the BBC News (72 million) and CNBC (17 million).
Semafor originally reported that NBC News’ YouTube channel had 78 million views in July but posted an addendum saying another tracking source ranked NBC News’ July views at 180 million and Kelly’s views at 105 million. Semafor didn’t report on ABC News’ YouTube subscriptions or viewers.
Regardless, Kelly achieved her success with only six staffers.
Six staffers!
Then there’s former New York Times reporter Bari Weiss, who resigned from the publication in 2020 and has since gone on to co-found a successful online publication called The Free Press. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, Weiss is already a millionaire on paper several times over.
According to a snarky profile the Times recently published on Weiss, TFP last month had 750,000 subscribers, of which 100,000 pay $8 a month. Last April, TFP announced it had 630,591 subscribers, making it the No. 1 publication on Substack, which caters to more discerning readers than those who prefer being repeatedly lied to by the corporate media.
In April, Weiss disclosed TFP had 25 fulltime staffers.
25!
The comedian Joe Rogan is another personality who is crushing it. According to Bloomberg, Rogan “is widely accepted as the most popular podcaster on Earth,” with 14.5 million Spotify followers. That’s nearly three times more than the next most followed program, TED Talks Daily.
Let me put all this into perspective. The Washington Post since Joe Biden was elected president has lost half its audience, and in 2023 lost some $77 million. While the red ink has been staunched somewhat, it’s rare anyone forwards me an article or commentary from Jeff Bezos’ ailing publication, but my inbox is filled with TFP articles readers send urgently recommending I read.
Pretty much every corporate media publication I’m familiar with is firing staff, including the Wall Street Journal, a publication I no longer perceive as credible as it was before British import Emma Tucker took over last year. ABC News underwent a round of layoffs last March and there were reports in July that more are forthcoming or possibly have already been implemented.
I’m comfortable speculating that if ABC News’ Muir started his own YouTube channel, he wouldn’t generate a sizeable following, yet ABC News possibly pays him as much as $8 million a year. Little wonder Disney’s stock today is worth less than it was five years ago.
What plagues corporate media publications is an arrogance that they are smarter and wiser than the public, and it’s their responsibility to ensure at all costs that Donald Trump doesn’t get reelected. That’s why ABC News rigged the debate, but the dishonesty might backfire as Americans still don’t take kindly to liars and cheaters, particularly those claiming higher moral and ethical standards.
Trump haters had better hope a disgruntled ABC News staffer or one with a conscience doesn’t leak a memo or some other evidence confirming the fix was in when Trump walked on to the debate stage. Having nearly been assassinated because of an inept Secret Service, Trump could possibly emerge as an aggrieved candidate the public perceives as deserving of sympathy and support.
As the saying goes, cheaters never prosper.