CNBC’s Joe Kernen Rats Out CNN’s Oliver Darcy to Top Company Shareholder For Blasting Elon Musk
CNBC anchor Joe Kernen ratted out CNN reporter Oliver Darcy to a top shareholder of the cable news network’s parent company over Darcy’s recent criticism of Elon Musk.
Darcy, who helms the widely-read Reliable Sources newsletter, blasted Musk this week over his interview with Don Lemon, labeling the billionaire owner of X a “right-wing s–tposter” who spends his time “swimming in the right-wing fever swamps” of the platform.
“In the contentious interview, Musk equated moderating dangerous and appalling hate speech to ‘censorship,’ bashed the press for legitimate reporting, assailed DEI programs without supporting evidence, skewered advertisers who fled the X platform last year and yet again gave credence to the racist Great Replacement theory, among other things,” Darcy wrote in Reliable Sources on Tuesday.
Darcy argued that Musk’s latest theories may appear “bizarre” and “foreign” to people who aren’t stepped in the partisan algorithmic silo that Musk has fallen into.
Kernen, the co-anchor of iconic CNBC morning show Squawk Box, responded to a story on X, formerly Twitter, from conservative website Newsbusters that criticized Darcy’s hit on Musk.
“Calling John Malone,” Kernen wrote, a reference to powerful WarnerBros. Discovery shareholder John Malone.
Calling John Malone https://t.co/2eiWXnCk7Y
— Joe Kernen (@JoeSquawk) March 20, 2024
Malone has been an ominous fixture in water cooler chatter among CNN staffers and insiders for the last few years. The conservative media mogul has previously criticized CNN, accusing the network of liberal bias and calling for it to “evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with.” He suggested Fox News as a model of division between news and opinion. Still Malone has denied having any influence over the inner workings of CNN. When the New York Times reported on speculation that Malone could have had something to do with the ouster of Brian Stelter from the network, Malone insisted that he had “nothing to do with” the nixing of Stelter’s show and that while he wants “the ‘news’ portion of CNN to be more centrist, but I am not in control or directly involved.”
As for why Kernen is coming for Darcy, it could have something to do with the CNN reporter calling out the CNBC anchor for not fact-checking former President Donald Trump during an interview earlier this month.
In a withering review published in Reliable Sources, Darcy wrote that Kernen allowed the Republican nominee for president to make “outrageous and false comments” on air without push back or scrutiny.
“Kernen let it all fly. Rather than fact-checking Trump, or at least providing context about the serious allegations he leveled to viewers, the CNBC host brushed the insidious comments aside and attempted to move the interview along,” Darcy wrote.
