Oliver Darcy, the author of the influential CNN newsletter “Reliable Sources,” has left the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed broadcaster, calling into question the direction of the company’s media franchise.
A new newsletter from Darcy entitled “Status” landed in email inboxes on Thursday morning.
“Status draws on a wide range of sources and industry expertise to deliver hard-hitting reporting and brutal analysis of the Fourth Estate, Hollywood and Silicon Valley,” Darcy wrote in an email sent via the Beehive platform. “There’s nothing sugarcoated, nothing held back, no sparing of fragile egos – just the unvarnished truth about the companies and people who shape our world.” He said the newsletter will be published Sunday through Thursday.
Neither CNN nor Darcy immediately responded to a request seeking comment, but a person familiar with the matter said the journalist had left the news channel and indicated that the next steps for Reliable Sources were not immediately clear.
“Reliable Sources” was once one of CNN’s staple programs. The show ran for 30 years on Sunday mornings and took a critical look at the media’s handling of issues mostly related to the Washington news cycle. Initially, Bernard Kalb hosted the show, then Howard Kurtz. In 2013, CNN hired Brian Stelter as host, an entrepreneurial media reporter who parlayed a blog he created examining the television news industry into a media job at the New York Times. During Jeff Zucker’s tenure, Stelter started a newsletter that became required reading for media insiders.
However, CNN parted ways with Stelter after the television show was canceled in 2022 – reportedly to curb an aggressive demeanor that had developed at CNN under Zucker’s aegis and that the parent company’s executives perceived as left-leaning. Darcy, who had come on board to work on the newsletter and media coverage, was tasked with keeping the newsletter running.
Darcy’s last newsletter, “Reliable Sources,” published Wednesday evening, contained no reference to his departure. But the top story of the day was a critique of the disastrous results of CNN’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, which announced a $9.1 billion write-down on the value of its television stations on Wednesday. “David Zaslav had a particularly rough day,” Darcy wrote in the introduction to the newsletter.
