Jim Acosta — the man who spent four years turning White House press briefings into his personal audition reel — is now deeply concerned that someone might use a news network for propaganda purposes. Acosta appeared on Katie Couric's podcast "Next Question" on May 27 to warn that the Ellisons purchasing CBS Paramount could create "the makings of a propaganda giant."
I'm sorry, I need a minute. Jim Acosta is worried about propaganda. In the media. That he worked in. For years. Doing propaganda.
According to NewsBusters, Acosta told Couric this was an "ideological project on the part of the Ellisons" and clutched his pearls insisting "we haven't had that before in this country." We haven't had that before? Jim, buddy, you were literally the face of it. CNN under your watch wasn't a news network — it was a resistance movement with a chyron budget.
Couric, to her marginal credit, at least had the presence of mind to ask, "Well, we have Fox News, wouldn't you call that?" Which is adorable, because Katie seems to think the problem is limited to one network on the other side. She conveniently forgot the part where ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, MSNBC, and CNN all spent the Obama years competing over who could carry his water faster.
Remember 2015, when the networks declared President Obama was having the "best week ever"? Remember Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel turning late-night television into DNC fundraising telethons? Remember Katie Couric herself and her $16 million settlement? She dismissed it as a "specious lawsuit that had no merit" — the way you do when you pay $16 million to make something with "no merit" go away.
The real panic here isn't about journalism. It's about territory. For decades, these people controlled what Americans were allowed to hear, and they called it news. Now that the Ellisons might bring in someone like Bari Weiss and change the editorial direction, suddenly the "regular tried and true news divisions" — Acosta's phrase, not mine — are sacred institutions that must be preserved.
Translation: "We had a monopoly on telling you what to think, and we'd like to keep it."
Here's what kills me. Acosta didn't leave CNN because he found journalistic integrity. CNN's parent company Warner Brothers Discovery showed him the door, and he's been podcasting from what I can only assume is a very bitter spare bedroom ever since. Now he's an expert on what constitutes real news versus propaganda.
The arsonist is complaining about fire safety codes. The guy who screamed at presidents, invented confrontations, and made himself the story every single day is now concerned that news might become too "ideological." Terry Moran could anchor a segment on the irony and still not cover half of it.
This is what happens when the left loses control of the microphone. They don't adapt. They don't compete. They cry "propaganda" and hope you forget that they wrote the playbook.
We didn't forget, Jim. We watched the whole thing.
