Ari Fleischer has been battling media bias for decades, so there are high expectations that when Broadside Books-HarperCollins releases his latest book next month, new examples will pour out.
If a nugget Secrets has seen is any indication, those hopes will be fulfilled.
In Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias: Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong — And Just Doesn’t Care, Fleischer cites data from the Media Research Center about CNN’s featuring of disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti, who recently pleaded guilty to embezzlement and tax charges.
Fleischer, the former spokesman for President George W. Bush, said Avenatti was booked on CNN to talk about Trump sex accuser Stormy Daniels and Russian collusion more times than all of former President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 team during the first year of the coronavirus crisis.
“Avenatti’s 122 live appearances over one year easily beat the 68 interviews by Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and the HHS director of coronavirus diagnostic testing, Dr. Brett Giroir, combined, during the entire first year of the COVID outbreak,” Fleischer wrote with amazement.
Overall, the lawyer was interviewed on national TV outlets 254 times from March 2018 through early 2019. At one point, there was even talk of him running for president because he was so well recognized.
Fleischer said CNN was the go-to place for anti-Trump reports.
“If someone, almost anyone, had dirt on Trump and his possible connections to Russia, CNN was the place to air it,” he wrote.
And, he added, the cable network wasn’t just anti-Trump but also anti-Republican. He cited the 2021 election of black Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) as an example. After his election, CNN’s Christian Sierra tweeted out that Warnock was the first black senator elected in the South, ignoring the prior 2016 election of Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).
