Media firefighters Daniel Dale and Donie O’Sullivan run away from the burning building
Few media outlets claim to be as passionate about “the truth” as CNN. The failing left-wing network, which claims to be an objective source of news and analysis, has two esteemed reporters dedicated to checking “facts” and combating “misinformation.” Yet those reporters, Daniel Dale and Donie O’Sullivan, have been glaringly absent in recent days amid the epidemic of false statements and misinformation surrounding the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Dale, whose so-called fact-checks are overwhelmingly aimed at President Donald Trump, Republican officials, and conservative social media users, has published just one article since Kirk was killed on Sept. 10. It has nothing to do with the assassination or the barrage of lies being circulated by prominent liberal commentators or the widely shared quotes falsely attributed to Kirk in an effort to justify his murder. Instead, Dale’s latest work focused on an issue of even greater importance: “Trump’s latest lies about California’s election and mail-in voting.”
On social media, where much of the misinformation is being shared and consumed, Dale has shown no interest in using his command of “the truth” to set the record straight. He hasn’t posted anything on X, the immigrant-owned social networking platform, since Sept. 3. This is hardly the first time Dale has gone missing for extended periods of time. During the Biden administration, he was not sufficiently motivated to fact-check the Democratic president, a habitual liar Dale praised for being “generally factual,” so he posted less frequently. Instead, Dale would often target obscure “conservative tweeters,” MAGA bodybuilders, and “the Marine who Trump brought on stage at a rally.”
O’Sullivan, the misinformation expert, hasn’t published an article since June 16, and hasn’t posted on X since Aug. 17. According to his Instagram feed, he appears to be on vacation on the Massachusetts coast after filming a segment for CNN in South Africa. O’Sullivan earned an Emmy nomination earlier this year for his coverage of misinformation and political violence, which included a notorious interview with disgraced left-wing journalist Taylor Lorenz. O’Sullivan giggled like a shifty leprechaun as Lorenz praised Luigi Mangione, the alleged assassin who gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, as a “handsome [and] morally good man, which is hard to find.” He went on to claim political violence in America was “mostly” a product of “right-wing extremism.”
For some reason, O’Sullivan was remarkably uninterested in covering the outburst of left-wing violence that took place over the summer. Between May 21 and June 1, two Israeli embassy officials were gunned down in Washington, D.C., by a radical leftist shouting, “Free Palestine,” and dozens of peaceful marchers were injured in Colorado by an illegal immigrant wielding a makeshift flamethrower threatening to “kill all Zionist people.” Rather than report on these national news stories, O’Sullivan covered the defamation trial of My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell and traveled to the California desert to attend a conference of UFO enthusiasts (no, we’re not making this up).
Last month, O’Sullivan did a segment on Kirk’s upcoming tour of college campuses. He didn’t interview Kirk, but he did speak with Steve Bonnell, aka “Destiny,” the popular left-wing activist who recently argued conservatives need to “be afraid of getting killed when they go to events” in order to reduce political violence in America.
If either O’Sullivan or Dale were interested in covering the falsehoods and misinformation surrounding the Kirk assassination, they’d find no shortage of material. Liberals were furious on Monday when radical beefcake columnist Karen Attiah announced she had been fired by the Washington Post for her posts on social media about Kirk. Her posts included a false quote, widely shared by liberals on social media, suggesting Kirk had said all black women “do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously” (he was specifically referring to former Texas Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee).
Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College and Substack author with more than a million subscribers, confidently asserted Kirk’s alleged assassin was someone “who appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical.” In fact, there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim beyond the misinformation circulating on social media. Nevertheless, a recent YouGov poll found nearly one in four Americans believed the alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, was a Republican.
On Tuesday, prosecutors in Utah revealed Robinson had outlined his actual motive in a text to his transgender lover: “I had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” This detail merely confirms what has been previously reported. Robinson’s political views were of the radical left-wing variety shared by an alarming number of Americans who are publicly celebrating Kirk’s death on account of his “hateful” views.
In any event, this seems like a massive story for professional journalists who claim to specialize in facts, misinformation, and political violence.
So, where the hell are they?
