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Rumors that began circulating two months ago have finally been confirmed. Outspoken liberal CNN host Brian Stelter is gone.
Sources said that Stelter was “down to weeks if not days” left at CNN. “He is everything that reminds the new owners of the Zucker era they desperately want to get past,” the source added.
“Management is confident Stelter is the one sharing the internal pushback to fellow media reporters while simultaneously stirring discontent within the ranks,” the source said.
Many Americans have turned about from Stelter who is the anti-Trump host of ‘Reliable Sources.” His last show will be on Sunday.
A CNN spokesperson said, “CNN will end its ‘Reliable Sources’ program on Sunday, August 21st. As a result Brian Stelter will leave the company. We appreciate his contributions to the network and wish him well as he embarks on new endeavors.”
In June, CNN’s “Reliable Sources” had its lowest-rated episode since September 2019 with only 580,000 viewers. The show has regularly struggled to capture the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults age 25-54. The show only averages 73,000 viewers from this age group.
Before Stelter’s show was launched, its predecessor “Fareed Zakaria GPS” generated 13% more views than “Reliable Sources.”
Incoming CEO Chris Licht of CNN signaled that he is making major waves against blatant bias, anti-Trump personalities like Stelter.
Licht is demanding that the liberal network become less partisan and stir away from the angry years seen during the presidency of Donald Trump.
If both on-air personalities and their programming doesn’t comply, they could be fired. Three sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Axios that on-air talent needs to adjust to a less partisan tone and strategy. If not, they could be ousted.
Licht reportedly wants to feature more personalities that are less polarizing. This approach is much different than former CNN president Jeff Zucker.
Zucker was accused of programming that engaged in disrespectful interviews and “PR stunts.” Under Zucker, producers and bookers focused less on nuance and mostly on noise.
More on this story via Fox News:
Stelter said in a statement to NPR that he was grateful for his time at CNN and the show’s examination of the “media, truth and the stories that shape our world.” A former New York Times reporter, he joined CNN in 2013 and took over the Sunday media affairs show at that time.
Stelter’s exit comes as new CNN CEO Chris Licht has put an emphasis on “news,” as opposed to the liberal opinion programming that the network become known for under previous management during the Trump administration.
Stelter developed a reputation as a left-wing pundit who spent much of his airtime criticizing conservative media. He was recently called out in a report about an attempt to restore the organization’s nonpartisan approach as the “face of the network’s liberal shift” in the eyes of conservatives.
Stelter, one of the mainstream media’s most outspoken critics of former President Trump, will host his final CNN show on Sunday. In what many assumed was an attempt to appease new management, Stelter recently had an apparent epiphany about the severity of the Hunter Biden scandal, which turned out not to be a dismissable “right-wing media story” like the liberal pundit insisted in 2020.
CNN executive vice president Amy Entelis described Stelter as an “impeccable broadcaster” on his way out the door.
