CNN doesn’t think The Daily Caller covers Stormy Daniels enough, “Stormy” being the stage name of a porn star who has accused President Donald Trump of an affair.
The first problem with CNN’s argument is simple enough: their premise is false. The second problem, though, is their premise is insidious. And both problems are tenets of the same faith: the cult of The Narrative. The Narrative: A new orthodoxy that has a rule for any sin man can dream of, from doubting gender fluidity to doubting Russian collusion to using “man” instead of “people” — an orthodoxy that is enforced with the kind of pious zeal you can only feel when you don’t have an actual religion to keep your culture rooted.
Oliver Darcy, a former conservative and a recent CNN hire, is the perfect little zealot: a convert-turned-inquisitor. He’s made it his business to attack center-right media that strays from the The Narrative, and on Thursday, he lashed out at The Daily Caller in an article called “Pro-Trump Media Sweeps Stormy Daniels Story Under Rug.”
“There was one story on the homepage of The Daily Caller, a conservative news website founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson,” Darcy cried out to the multitude, “but it was buried under a slew of other stories.”
In the interest of the arbitrary “Thursday morning” timeline CNN set to substitute for actual analysis, TheDC posted an article shortly after 10 a.m. Titled “REVEALED: Trump Lawyer Won Restraining Order Against Stormy Daniels In Secret Proceeding,” it was one of the most popular on the site that day, trending for hours and showing clear audience interest in the story. This must be the story we’re credited for.
A second “Stormy” story was posted in the 3 p.m. hour, a third just after 4.
The day before, “STORMY SUES, Wants To Tell All About Alleged Affair,” was posted in the morning package in the top column of TheDC’s homepage, on the same level as the top story, remaining there for a solid 12 hours and indicating a clear editorial interest. Oliver wouldn’t have even had to be up before lunch to have caught this: He simply could have used the Wayback Machine, a widely-used tool for checking what happened on the internet while “senior media reporters” are sleeping soundly on their waterbeds. (RELATED: Here’s A Photo Of Hillary Signing Copies Of Newsweek’s ‘Madam President’ Issue)
The Daily Caller, in fact, has published 25 stories on “Stormy” since Jan. 12, when she debuted on our pages with, “REPORT: Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment For Adult-Film Star’s Silence.”
Fox News was also not spared CNN’s zealous gaze. “A search in TV Eyes, a media monitoring search engine,” Oliver reported breathlessly, “returned only two segments in which the unfolding drama was discussed on the network Thursday morning.”
Pity he didn’t check the day before, when The Daily Caller News Foundation’s editor in chief weighed in on the scandal on one Fox News. (LAST MONTH: Fox News Wins Landmark Copyright Lawsuit Over Media Clipping Service TVEyes)
This too is outside the arbitrary “Thursday morning” timeline established by the prosecution, but that arbitrary timeline is necessary if one is bent on defending The Narrative. We must defend The Narrative. (RELATED: Snopes, Which Will Be Fact-Checking For Facebook, Employs Leftists Almost Exclusively)
And so we get to the insidious side. After the 2016 elections, which saw debate moderators, network commentators, politics reporters, fact-checkers and entire newspapers caught betraying objectivity for political ends, the press, facing plummeting levels of trust, called for censorship of the things it deemed outside the faith. (RELATED: The Media Is Consolidating Power After A Disastrous Election)
President Barack Obama’s own press secretary had to remind reporters four times in a single press conference about the First Amendment before reporters turned to the priests of Silicon Valley, who were more obliging in their censorship, retreating slightly only after they were exposed for gross abuses of power. Undeterred, CNN hired its own little inquisitors and tasked them with enforcing the orthodoxy. “Does The Daily Caller’s homepage look different from our own?” they may have asked themselves. “Collusion,” they may have answered. “Take it to the Twitter. There — there! — we will see true justice.” (RELATED: The Call To Censor Bad News Isn’t New, Doesn’t Make Sense, And Should Frighten You A Great Deal)
See, there’s a pack mentality in the American media. Some think it’s the product of liberal bias seasoned with coastal upbringing. A few call it a product of stupidity peppered with laziness. Still others, a product of the overwhelming urge to self-congratulate on Twitter until some memory of high school bullying stops hurting. Most likely, it’s a combination of all of this, and it’s why we’ve seen more than a year of breathless Donald Trump scandals, reported as if by choir. It’s why Sam Nunberg, a troubled man whose heavy drinking has been known to reporters for years, was touted as the missing link to a Russian collusion scandal, allowed to fall to pieces drunk and apparently manic, and was kept on air long after his state became apparent. (RELATED: Zuckerberg Berates Facebook Employees Who Think ‘All Lives Matter’)
The Daily Caller covered Stormy Daniels, and will continue to cover Stormy Daniels so long as it is newsworthy. The Daily Caller will never emulate CNN, nor tailor our coverage to make CNN’s “tail wag.” (RELATED: BuzzFeed Caught Citing Fake Data In Its ‘Fake News Won The Election For Trump’ Argument … Again)
Every free news outlet in the country is a product of the news, combined with its editors’ and reporters’ interests, informed by their life experiences, and nudged within the confines of its audience’s interests. Every editor and every reporter knows the disappointment of seeing that not everyone shares their enthusiasm for this or that story. Expecting every outlet to look and react the same, in holy unison, is the business of an inquisitor, not a “senior media reporter.” Then again, if the media is your new religion, then it all makes sense.
And please protect The Narrative.