CNN Uncovers Racist Posts By Tucker Carlson Staffer; Behind The Scenes With Top Infectious Disease Reporter; The "Firehose" Of News About COVID-19
BRIAN STELTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, I'm Brian Stelter live in New York. And this is RELIABLE SOURCES, our weekly look at the story behind the story, the media news you need to know. This hour, the story behind Roger Stone's commutation. Which TV and radio hosts pushed Trump to do it? Plus, covering the summer spike in COVID-19 cases. One of the world's top infectious disease reporters will join me live in just a few minutes. And later, something that affects all of us -- a new look at where newspapers are disappearing across America. Margaret Sullivan will here talking about how the coronavirus is compounding the local news crisis. But, first, a CNN exclusive, about the top writer on the top show in cable news. For several days, CNN's Oliver Darcy has been investigating a tip about Blake Neff. Neff is a writer for "Tucker Carlson Tonight", at least he was until Friday when he resigned. Darcy confirmed that Neff used a synonym to post-bigoted, sexist remarks on an online forum. That forum, by the way, is a hot bed for racism, sexism, and other offensive content. You can read Darcy's full story up on CNN.com right now. He has all the, frankly, gruesome details about what Neff was posting and who he was interacting with, and why it matters, because that's what we're going to get into today. Yes, Neff has resigned, it's been an embarrassment for Fox News, but it matters because "Tucker Carlson Tonight" is a hugely, high rated show, with a pipeline right to the president's ear. Now, on Saturday afternoon, after Darcy's story was published, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace condemned Neff in this memo saying his abhorrent conduct on the forum was never divulged to the show or the network, until Friday, at which point we swiftly accepted his resignation. With me now is the aforementioned, Oliver Darcy, along with Nicole Hemmer, associated research scholar at Columbia University and the author of the book "Messengers of the Right: All About the Conservative Media Landscape." Oliver, so you looked into this for several days. You reached out to Neff for comment, that's when he resigned. And Fox says they didn't know what he was doing. But his words, his racist rhetoric, doesn't it line up with the monologues that he was writing for Tucker Carlson?</s>OLIVER DARCY, CNN SENIOR MEDIA REPORTER: They sure do, Brian. A lot of the ideology he was spreading on this forum, he -- you know, there's a direct trace to what Tucker Carlson says on air. That's why this story matters, Brian. I think viewers should know this wasn't a random staffer on Tucker Carlson's show. This was his top writer, someone he was helping to shape and write the monologues. He boasted that everything that Tucker Carlson said in a teleprompter he had written the first draft of (ph), and he's been secretly posting racist and sexist things online for years and as recently as this week. And so, what you have here, then, is someone who is basically using Tucker Carlson's show to mainstream these racist and sexist ideas. While he might not be using those nutty words that he was using in this online forum, the ideas are very much the same and you have millions of people watching Tucker Carlson's show, it's the highest rated show on cable news, and you have the president of the United States not only watching, but often sharing the monologues that Tucker Carlson gives on his nightly show, which now we know were in part written by someone who has a racist and sexist history online.</s>STELTER: Yes, we're not going to re-air all these hateful comments, but you can read them at CNN.com. Oliver, you went through it and you shared this in your article in detail, so people know exactly what we're talking about. Nicole, how did you react to the story when it broke on Friday night? Is this one of those do you file under shocking but not surprising? How do you characterize it?</s>NICOLE HEMMER, AUTHOR, "MESSENGERS OF THE RIGHT": I think "shocking not surprising" is probably the best way. I mean, it's important that we see the way that AT these ideas, which gestate in other places, get mainstreamed through Tucker Carlson's shows and other places as well. But you read that story, and you're not surprised because if you watch Tucker Carlson's show, this lines up pretty cleanly with the kind of anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric that he uses. I mean, here's a show that has talked about the demographic erasure of white people, that has called immigrants poor and dirty, that constantly demonizes non- white women in the Congress. I mean, this is -- this is not a surprise because the ideologies line up even if the words aren't always exactly the same.</s>STELTER: Well, look -- look, many years ago when he was working for MSNBC, he was talking about Iraqis as semi-literate primitive monkeys. He was making racist and homophobic comments years ago as discovered by the left-wing advocacy group, Media Matters. You know, there are reasons why Carlson has pretty -- relatively few advertisers, he has relatively few sponsors because many advertisers do not want to be associated with him. But I think there's this -- there's this paradox, maybe, Nicole, which is advertisers don't want to be near his show. Some guests turn him down. But it's the highest-rated show on cable news. And there's talk about Tucker Carlson running for president someday because he's so aligned up with the Republican Party. Can you square that circle?</s>HEMMER: Yeah. I'm not sure that it needs a lot of squaring, right? But he has a significant amount of political power. He's very popular. He was hired to help with sort of the Trumpification of Fox News, right? His show -- he was hired for that show like a week after Donald Trump was elected. So, he was hired in part because his views line up not only with where Donald Trump is, but where the base of the Republican Party is. And so, if Donald Trump is not just a blip in the Republican Party, but the future of it, then yeah, Tucker Carlson makes a lot of sense as the next stage of the GOP's development.</s>STELTER: So, I mentioned the statement from Fox on Saturday saying that they denounce this horrific and deeply offensive commentary from this writer who has resigned. Oliver, we've heard from Fox, have we heard from Tucker?</s>DARCY: Well, Tucker Carlson on Friday night after the story came out, he went online -- on air, sorry, and condemned cancel culture. He had a whole segment of his show against cancel culture. He didn't directly address this, but he alluded to it. And he, you know, attacked CNN and said particularly CNN as a force of cancel culture and made the argument that it's bad for society. So, while he's going to address this later, Fox News executives say, he really did address it before. I think the later comment is really going to be more of what is Fox News compelling going to say in the face of all this controversy.</s>STELTER: And what about the Murdochs. It's ultimately about the Murdochs, about the owners of Fox Corporation. And we very rarely hear from Lachlan or Rupert.</s>DARCY: Right, and we know in the past that they've actually supported Tucker Carlson as he's endured some of the backlash for his anti- immigrant comments. So, you know, I wouldn't expect Lachlan Murdoch to grow the courage to condemn what this writer was saying, but, you know, who knows?</s>STELTER: Let's turn to two other stories that relate to Tucker, because as I said, highest rated guy on cable news right now. He was one of the voices in President Trump's ear with regards to Roger Stone. So, Nicole, tell us about that. I mean, this is about the president hearing from Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, and then eventually not even -- going against Bill Barr and commuting Roger Stone's sentence.</s>HEMMER: Yeah, I mean, I think this goes back to your previous question, which is why does somebody like Tucker Carlson remain on Fox News even though he loses advertisers and things like that. And part of the answer is he is a direct pipeline to the president. The president listens to him. And that sort of one-on-one relationship which Hannity has as well, is really important and really powerful. And so it gives Fox News and Tucker Carlson quite a lot of power, especially for a situation like this. I mean, we've seen this with pardons before, kind of a Fox News pipeline where people are elevated as a cause celebre in Fox News and then pardoned by the president.</s>STELTER: And then the other story involving Carlson this week is Tammy Duckworth. Tammy Duckworth, the senator, was on this network last Sunday. She was asked about George Washington's statue. She said we should think about it but coronavirus matters more, so she immediately pivoted from that question. But just that brief comment by Duckworth was enough for Tucker Carlson to attack her two nights in a row and call her a coward and call her unpatriotic. And, Oliver, I suppose this is the state of the GOP, that name-calling and insults from the president to Tucker on down, that is how this entire game is played.</s>DARCY: Right. The unifying thing in the GOP really comes down to what they call owning the libs. That's what Carlson's show often has been. What he was saying about Duckworth was less of an attack and more of a smear. He was trying to smear her as an anti-American fanatic, someone who has gone to war, lost both of her limbs in service of this country, received the Purple Heart, come back and worked at the V.A. to improve the lives of veterans. He was trying to smear this United States senator as an anti-American fanatic. That goes beyond the normal I disagree with your policies on taxes or whatever it may be.</s>STELTER: It's pathetic. It's pathetic and it should be beneath him. Tucker Carlson is so smart. He doesn't have to go to the gutter like that.</s>DARCY: It should really be outside what the public discourse allows for, even at Fox News. I know that Fox obviously is all about attacking Democrats and, you know, they should stay with the positions. I think it was just abhorrent and reprehensible that would question the patriotism of someone who has literally given their lives -- given their limbs in service of this country.</s>STELTER: You know, it always goes back to this, Fox is pro-Trump, yes, but it's really anti-Democrat. The channel is ultimately more anti-Democrat than it is pro-Trump, and that is why it's all about Biden on Fox right now, it's all about trying to destroy Biden with whatever means they can. One more point, Nicolle, before we go break and this brings us back full circle on the subject of racism. Earlier in the week, President Trump tweeted an attack against Bubba Wallace, claiming that he made up a hoax, which he did not, and making up information about NASCAR's ratings. The reason I want to bring this up is it's another example of the president pedaling racism. And you wrote for NBC that it's part of a racist Twitter ventriloquism act. I want you to tell me what that means? I thought that was really interesting.</s>HEMMER: Yes, I mean, because the president -- there are certain things the president shouldn't say. Though he normally says things he shouldn't say, one way that he can amplify racist content without being the person saying it is to retweet it because he has sort of a plausible deniability at that point. It's not -- he's Twitter saying it, it is his retweets that are saying it, and he can say, retweets aren't endorsements or I'm just kidding or it wasn't me, and that allows him to --</s>STELTER: Or he's just, like, I'm not attacking, I just happened to attack the only black star of NASCAR, you know? It's like, it's hmm -- yeah.</s>HEMMER: Exactly. That's something that's consistent with his history and the way that he talks about race and racism. Sometimes he's quite explicit about it but sometimes he needs that plausible deniability to try to continue to move black voters as well.</s>STELTER: Nicole Hemmer and Oliver Darcy, thank you very much. Oliver and I will continue to cover this in the nightly newsletter we have at CNN.com. Quick break here, and we do have breaking news involving the newspaper business. One of the biggest newspaper chains in the country, McClatchy, owning papers from "The Miami Herald" to the "Sacramento Bee" t has just in the past few minutes been sold to a giant hedge fund. We're going to have to latest on that in the next few minutes. Plus, the White House Correspondents Association president, Jonathan Karl, is standing by. He has a doozy of a new op-ed about the White House press secretary.