Good evening, and welcome to this week’s ‘Ragebait.’
Justin Baragona here. In tonight’s edition, I spoke to Hasan Piker about the networks’ refusal to interview him despite obsessively talking about him nonstop, and he told me whose shows he’d love to go on – if they have the guts. Also, we got some more details about the latest self-made disaster at CBS News.
Why Won’t the Networks Just Interview Piker?
If you’ve just casually tuned into cable news these past few weeks, chances are you were on the receiving end of a hyperbolic shoutfest aimed at convincing you that Hasan Piker, a leftist Twitch streamer who most Americans have never heard of, is the single biggest story in politics today.
Ever since Piker began stumping for Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed in the pivotal Michigan Senate race, the progressive influencer has been the focus of outsized coverage by both the mainstream and right-wing news networks. However, what had been a steady stream of faux outrage over Piker’s at-times provocative statements turned into a tsunami of ragebait once El-Sayed won the Democratic primary early last month.
“I think it’s an unbelievable distraction, and I think it’s a disservice to the American public to focus on a Twitcher this much at a time of unprecedented crises in the country and all around the world is ridiculous,” Piker told me in an interview. “I think people are very frustrated by what’s going on, and they’re frustrated by their media not serving their needs and serving their interests.”
I decided to check just how much time Fox and other networks are spending talking about Piker. Here’s what I found: