Ex-CBS Pres Issues Scathing Comments: Establishment Media Is Wildly Liberal and Anti-Trump
The former president of CBS News launched an all-out assault against establishment media outlets this week in a scathing Op-Ed that decried their far-left turn in recent decades.
Van Gordon Sauter, who helmed the network during two separate stints in the 1980s, called out two of the country’s cable news outlets, describing them as “unrelentingly liberal.”
“On the home screen, the three broadcast network divisions still have their liberal tilt. Two of the three leading cable news sources are unrelentingly liberal in their fear and loathing of President Trump,” he wrote in a Monday Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journal.
The former CBS News president was likely referring to MSNBC and CNN in citing “[t]wo of the three leading cable news sources.”
Sauter also had harsh words for some of the country’s prominent newspapers.
“The highly influential daily newspapers in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Boston are now decidedly liberal,” Sauter wrote.
He also touched on the unwatchable spectacle that late night TV has become.
“The news media is catching up with the liberalism of the professoriate, the entertainment industry, upscale magazines and the literary world. Recent arrivals are the late-night TV hosts who have broken the boundaries of what was considered acceptable political humor for networks,” Sauter added.
Sauter then asked reporters how they intend to redeem the loss of their credibility and journalistic integrity, and cover the next four years should Trump win a second term in November.
“To the journalists, including more than a few Republicans, [the president] is a blatant vulgarian, an incessant prevaricator, and a dangerous leader who should be ousted next January, if not sooner,” he wrote.
But, he asked, “How will a large segment of the public ever put stock in journalism it considers hostile to the country’s best interests?”
If you’ve been paying attention, it’s not breaking news that the national media is tilted to the left, but the admission from a media insider such as Sauter is a welcome confirmation of what so many conservative Americans already know.
The media, including Sauter’s former employer, CBS News, abandoned objectivity long ago.
The disdain for conservatives among establishment media outlets is out in the open, as the media’s 24/7 assault on President Trump and his supporters has continued unabated for five years.
While Sauter may not be a supporter of the president, he is an experienced media veteran, and his perspective is both welcome and credible.
The days of Walter Cronkite narrating events in the evenings are gone, and they aren’t coming back.
Sauter is essentially asking the country’s legacy media outlets to find a middle ground between objectivity and shilling all day, every day, for Democrats on television and online.
A sensible person would find that request to be reasonable.
Don’t count on it happening.
If Trump is indeed re-elected, it is hard to imagine the establishment media to which Sauter is referring will relent and give a lame duck president a fair shake.
The activist reporting will probably turn farther to the left. (Democrats and the media have barely handled four years of Trump, so it’s hard to image them gleefully accepting four more.)
But at least the media is being called out by one of its own; that is a win for those who simply ask for objectivity in news reporting.
While Sauter may not be a Trump supporter, he deserves credit for asking the media to hold itself accountable for its slanted coverage and the damage it is doing to the American people.
The former executive took a bold step by standing up to the media’s pro-Democrat dogma, and that warrants the respect of conservatives.
After all, the ability to disagree with people and still have a basic level of respect for them is the very virtue our country needs to recover after years of divisive, inflammatory and outright false reporting.
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