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💬 A conversation with Oliver Darcy about the media beat

By Daniel Wine

CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy

If there's an important story on the media beat, rest assured that Oliver Darcy will be on top of the news.

Darcy is CNN's senior media reporter, and his work appears on air as well as the network's digital platforms. His Reliable Sources newsletter reflects the broad spectrum of topics that his job entails, and it's a must-read for anyone interested in the media and the way news comes together.

Before coming to CNN, Darcy was immersed in covering right-wing media and the trends he saw developing in that environment. He wrote about the civil war that gripped the Republican Party during the 2016 presidential campaign and the emergence of the alt-right. Shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated, Darcy joined CNN to cover that beat.

But over time, his role evolved into broader media coverage — including business, entertainment and technology — where he regularly breaks major stories. He describes his work as covering the ever-evolving information landscape.

"Media is such a big umbrella," he said. "Every day is different. One day might be Silicon Valley-focused, and one day might be Hollywood-focused, and then the next day might be about Fox News. There's just so much happening."

"I try to consume as much media as possible every single day."

- Oliver Darcy, senior media reporter

We caught up with Darcy for a chat last week from his office in New York, and the following is an edited version of our conversation.

What are some of your go-to news sources?

I usually check Drudge Report first thing, something I started reading when I was probably 13 or 14. I used to rely on Twitter more but find it less useful these days. When I get to the office, I go to The New York Times, The Washington Post and obviously CNN. Then I read the trade publications — Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, TheWrap — and cycle through those throughout the day. I have four televisions on and try to listen to some talk radio and podcasts to keep myself immersed in the audio world. I try to consume as much media as possible every single day.

Darcy frequently appears on air to discuss the intersection of media, politics and technology.

Your Reliable Sources email newsletter includes so much news. How does it all come together?

We pour our souls into that newsletter. It's a small team: me, our editor Jon Passantino and news assistant Liam Reilly. We read a lot of news across the internet and watch a lot of television. The newsletter distills the important things that happen each day for people who don't have time to read every major newspaper and magazine and digital news site. Our job is to read everything, find the important things, pull those out and highlight them for our readers. I have a file on my computer and just drop in links all day, and then we start building the newsletter. We do a column at the top with analysis on the biggest story of the day. From start to finish, it takes anywhere from eight to 12 hours a day to produce.

The media landscape is so chaotic. How can the average person sort through all the noise to get reliable news?

The most important thing is to turn to authoritative sources for your information. If you don't have much time, look toward CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal before exploring some of the other offerings out there. With a major legacy newsroom, there are going to be specific standards in place to ensure accuracy. Journalism is full of reporters and editors who spend the day working on the stories, checking the facts and giving you the news.

Do you think the $787.5 million settlement by Fox News in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit will make a difference in the long run?

Cases like that will make organizations like Fox less likely to defame companies and people. I don't think it will make them honest in presenting information to viewers, and that's evident by what they do every day. They're still wildly dishonest in the way they present what's happening in the world to their audience. I don't think any objective person really considers that to be a news organization as much as it's a talk channel.

Let's talk about Threads, the new social media app that just launched. Is this the end of Twitter?

It's really hard to predict what will happen with social networks. Threads is the first one to seriously threaten Twitter's dominance in that area. I've been a Twitter user since 2009 and would consider myself a power user of that site. I haven't tweeted since last week, but I have been on Threads. Twitter was better before Elon Musk took over. He has really ordered a series of radical changes that have caused it to deteriorate in both credibility and functionality. He decimated the verification system. The whole thing just seems like a complete mess.

Any stories you have covered with CNN that stand out?

I'm proud of the work we've done on people like Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson and exposing some of the things that have gone on there. I'm glad that we were able to cover CNN the same way we cover other news organizations when it was going through some turmoil the past several months. Really though, I'm proud of the work that we do every day, to be honest, whether there's a big news story or not.

Darcy enjoys traveling when not working his media beat.

How do you unplug outside of work?

I enjoy traveling quite a bit, so my wife and I try to do that as often as we can. We just got back from Greece, and that was amazing. There's a lot of history to check out, and you have Athens with the great museums and restaurants. Then you have those beautiful Greek islands to visit and relax. The other place that stands out is Iceland, with the volcanoes and fantastic places to hike. With those black-sand beaches, it's just so different from anywhere else. And it's the craziest thing to see the sun set and then almost immediately begin rising. It just blows your mind.

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