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CNN Fires Reporter Behind Defamation Report

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Jun 03, 2025
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Reporting on the Mirror – CNN

  • It took five months for accountability, but at last, it arrived.

CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt came out with a muted announcement that he would be leaving CNN. The fact that he did not indicate future plans made this sound like an involuntary separation, and now we get an indication that it appears being the center of the CNN defamation lawsuit was the motivating factor.

Former CNN media guru Oliver Darcy, citing contacts within the network, reports he learned that lawyers from the parent company of CNN, Warner Brothers-Discovery, interviewed Marquardt recently and then on Friday made the decision to sever ties with the journalist who was behind the reports that led to the network being sued for defamation.

Gilded Reframe – BBC

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  • How many tries did it take before getting this correct?

Frequently, when news outlets issue a correction, we get told how this actually instills credibility and shows a source to be reputable. The outlet has since corrected that the initial reporting seen widespread over the weekend could not be confirmed.

However, in the case of the BBC reporting on the attack on Gaza citizens receiving relief aid, we see how this explanation does not hold up. The BBC had numerous versions of this story before its retraction, showing that while there were problems with the story, it continued to plow ahead with its reports rather than confirm things first. Or second. Or third. Or fourth.

Gilded Reframe – WASHINGTON POST

  • Another recalibration arrives.

In its correction (of sorts), the Washington Post worked to repair the story of the Gaza attack, but the explanation fell a bit short of saying “We were caught believing the propaganda from Hamas.”

The explanation was instead saying how the initial reports fell short of its usual “standards of fairness,” when in actuality, it fell short of accuracy and verification.

Pre-Written Field Reports – CBS NEWS

  • Shouldn’t a professional news journalist reporter pundit correspondent expert know these details?!

In speaking with Rand Paul on “Face The Nation,” Margaret Brennan was getting somewhat testy with the senator boldly explaining how defunding NPR and PBS needed to happen.

Brennan felt the need to interrupt Senator Paul at one point, stressing how these cuts concern "Sesame Street." This has been the fallback argument heard from numerous defending Democrats and it is entirely baseless. The children’s program has not been under PBS ownership for a decade now and is about to be picked up by Netflix.

Low-Octane Gaslighting – MSNBC

  • How else will those poor hayseed rednecks get to see “Downton Abbey”?!

You just had to know it would be a fractured approach to the topic of defunding public broadcasters when MSNBC would approach the subject, and you knew it would go beyond common sense when they brought on David French to weigh in on it.

The greatest is how they resorted to feigning concern for the rural folks, those who both the network and French commonly degrade, suggesting that these goobers “out in the boondocks” have no other access to media but PBS and NPR. We still await the locations where people ONLY have access to PBS broadcasts and no other affiliates, and where NPR is the only radio station their radios can pick up.

Demo-lition Project – MSNBC

  • Comcast is breathing a sigh of relief after announcing the spinning off of this network.

With the ratings for the month of May in, the realities seen over at the revamped and recently released MSNBC are coming down – in particular has been the dismal performance of Jen Psaki. After President Trump hit his 100 days in office, which signaled Rachel Maddow backing down to being on the air just one day a week, Ms. Psaki took over the 9:00 pm timeslot Tuesdays through Fridays, and her performance has been lackluster. Or maybe non-luster.

She has lost nearly half of the audience – 47% – that Maddow and Alex Wagner delivered in the months prior, and she lost 53% in the advertiser’s demographic.