A couple of days ago Alan Dershowitz claimed during an appearance on Fox News that CNN had banned him for not toeing the party line with regard to the Mueller report:

“CNN banned me from their air because I was being too fair. I was trying to assess what the essential issue was, and I wasn’t being partisan. They didn’t want that. They didn’t want that.”

Dershowitz continued: “CNN wouldn’t have me on the air because they want a one-sided presentation, and everybody who watches CNN was shocked by the conclusions… no one who watches me was shocked.”

Today, Dershowitz doubled down on that claim with a piece published at the Hill. According to Dershowitz, after CNN stopped invited on the network he was told the order had come directly from Jeff Zucker:

During the first several months of the investigation, CNN viewers also heard my more nuanced, more centrist views. As a liberal Democrat who strongly supported Hillary Clinton, I had some credibility when I raised questions about the certainty with which other CNN guests had declared Trump guilty…

But then, suddenly, I was banned from CNN.

Over the past half year or so, I have never once been asked to appear on a CNN program. Initially I wondered why, and I asked some of my friends at the network. They were evasive and studiously avoided any direct answer to my question.

Then I received off-the-record information that an order had come from the very top: CNN executive Jeff Zucker didn’t want me on CNN any more. My centrist, nuanced perspective was anathema to CNN’s emerging brand as the anti-Trump network…

Jeff Zucker has said that he is “entirely comfortable” with CNN’s coverage. Of course he and his company’s shareholders are comfortable: Their one-sided coverage earned the network lots of money.

Dershowitz isn’t the only person complaining that the networks stopped calling when the commentary didn’t seem anti-Trump enough. Glenn Greenwald appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show Monday night and said he and other commentators stopped being invited on MSNBC because the network was invested in presenting only one side of the issue. In fact, Greenwald argued it was intentional disinformation designed to boost the failing network’s ratings.

“Let me just say, [MSNBC] should have their top host on primetime go before the cameras and hang their heads in shame and apologize for lying to people for three straight years, exploiting their fears to great profit,” Greenwald told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Monday night.

He continued: “These are people who were on the verge of losing their jobs. That whole network was about to collapse. This whole scam saved them. And not only did they constantly feed people for three straight years total disinformation; they did it on purpose.”…

Greenwald told Tucker that he along with a “whole slew” of left-wing journalists were banned by the network.

“They wanted their audience not to know that anybody was questioning or expressing skepticism about the lies and the scam that they were selling because it was profitable,” he claimed.

One of the other liberals dropped by MSNBC was Matt Taibbi. Yesterday I wrote about Taibbi’s very similar argument, i.e. that MSNBC intentionally lied to viewers for two years because it brought the network’s viewership up 65% and that was too significant to risk with a nuanced presentation of evidence.

Despite the strong case being made in places like the Intercept and Rolling Stone, and now by Dershowitz as well, the story doesn’t seem to be getting much media traction. Fox is covering it but CNN and MSNBC are understandably not interested in showing it to their audiences, especially when their hosts are in the midst of inventing new theories to keep the narrative (and the ratings) going. So it seems the media reckoning that is badly needed at this point is not going to happen because these networks are going to continue to ignore the point of view that doesn’t help their bottom line.

Here’s Gleen Greenwald’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show: