Tommy Christopher of Mediaite started the viral story with a tweet.
He points out Dale is still posting his fact checks regularly on the CNN website --just not on air.
Shunting Dale off the air (and sometimes behind a paywall) may be some kind of just like natural coincidental development or a strategy borne out of some mysterious news or business judgment that eludes me and/or logic or something else that CNN doesn’t want to say but is completely fine.
But it’s a bad idea.
A CNN spokesperson provided the following statement to Mediaite (exactly the same statement as was provided to Natalie Korach, Status correspondent):
There is no truth to this. Daniel is a multiplatform reporter whose regular fact checks of the President are an important part of CNN's political coverage. Like all CNN reporters, his on-air appearances are determined by the news of the day — any suggestion otherwise is false.
Still, Korach wrote, there is "particular sensitivity" on this issue because of Trump's well-documented hostility towards being fact-checked, especially with the increased "extraordinary pressure his administration is putting on media companies" in his second term, including how he has "repeatedly punished news outlets through lawsuits, regulatory scrutiny, and public attacks, in an effort to intimidate journalists and chill speech."
So does this have anything to do with Paramount announcing its plans to scoop up Warner Bros. Discovery two days after Dale's February fact check, an evisceration of Trump's State of the Union address?
Korach pointed out, which could be "entirely coincidental" timing but Dale's starkly reduced television appearances have "fueled speculation about why the previously visible fact-checker has abruptly disappeared from CNN's airwaves" and "raised some eyebrows at a moment when corporate media outlets are under a microscope for bending the knee to Trump as he intensifies his unprecedented assault on the press."
We all know face time is the measure of media influence. Without being on the air, Dale's influence is greatly subdued. I don't think it's a coincidence.
https://bsky.app/profile/bstnboy.bsky.social/post/3mnrreldfxs26
