vladimir putin's propaganda machine and how is right wing media involved? matthew chance has a report from the region. later, jussie smollett's hate crime hoax. we will unpack the media baggage from this case coming up. plus, jay rosen on how to cover a pro democracy, and much more coming up this hour. first, a sunday morning surprise in the tv news business. chris wallace, the veteran moderator of "fox news sunday," is leaving the network effective immediately. here's how he announced it on his show just a few minutes ago. >> it may sound corny but i feel we built a community here. there's a lot you can do on sunday mornings, the fact you have chosen to spend this hour with us is something i cherish. but after 18 years i have decided to leave fox. i want to try something new, to go beyond politics, to all of the things i'm interested in. i'm ready for a new adventure, and i hope you'll check it out. >> this is a shock to the tv news business. chris wallace is one of the, you know, journalists that is at fox who stands out like a sore thumb because the network has become more and more rat calized both in the trump years and now in the biden years. wallace last signed a contract with fox in 2017, and he had a four-year deal. i'm told according to sources knowledgeable with the matter, he decided to leave on his own, he wanted out at the end of his contract this year. that speaks volumes with what's changing at fox but also raises the question, where might he be going next? like i said, this news just broke in the last hour but there are several outlets reporting wallace may joan cnn, specifically the streaming service cnn-plus, which will launch early next year. cnn has not confirmed this but as soon as i get a comment from the a cnn spokesperson, i will let you know. let's talk about why this is a significant change at fox news. as brian klaas, the author pointed out on twitter here, just like the increasingly authoritarian republican party, when organizations radicalize the moderates either get purged or purge themselves. again, in the case of wallace, i'm told by a source fox wanted him to stay. he decided to leave. he has something new he wants to do. what does that say about fox and right wing media? joining me cnn political commentator and nationally syndicated columnist, will bunch from the "philadelphia inquirer" and julie eye offy, national correspondent association. thank you all for being here. you wrote recently about the tension in and around fox news, tucker carlson day by day, month by month taking over fox and his radicalism defines fox. do you think chris wallace, old-school you washington correspondent, just didn't fit in anymore at fox news? >> i don't think he did. he was often attacked by the right wing and people at fox. i feel like fox has become a -- like a crazy sauce that you keep on the burner and it keeps reducing more and more and gets more and more concentrated. and i think that flavor isn't for everybody. i can see why chris wallace, who is kind of a more down the middle just the facts man journalist, i think it's hard to say at a place like that. >> s.e. cupp, what do you think? >> well, brian, i think you and i were on a couple years ago -- i don't know if it was your show or my show and talking about the departure of shep smith and how that was a harboring of things to come and this premise was unsustainable. fox news used people like shep and chris and bret baier to say, look, we have a news division. yes, we have our entertainment side but we also have news people. except as julia mentioned, the news side was reporting on stuff that the entertainment side started contradicting and calling fake news. >> right. >> fs that was bad. and then the entertainment side started openly attacking people like chris and shep for their reporting of the news. that's unsustainable. when you have this carveout and say look at someone like chris wallace as evidence we're in this clean category but then you don't protect him from attacks inside the building, it's no wonder he wanted to leave and do something new. >> very recently "the washington post" said when tucker carlson's pro -- his 1/6 truther documentary came out, chris wallace and bret baier complained internally, they were uncomfortable with the conspiracy theory stuff coming out at prime time but what's happened at fox for years, news is shrinking, and right wing propaganda growing and growing, less room for chris wallace. what is your take on fox news? >> absolutely, i think this makes a mockery out of their original mantra fair and balanced they started out with 25 years ago. like se said, chris wallace and bret baier and shepard smith certainly, gave them the opportunity to say, look, we have a even side. we challenge conservatives. chris wallace almost every week, he had access to republican insiders and he challenged them regularly. that was a service for all of us, frankly, because other media outlets don't always have access to some of these republican figures and chris wallace give he them a hard time. this is like adam kinzinger, liz cheney moment for the republican party. is there a place for moderates? is there a place for people who will question the trumpist status quo? he may have other reasons for moving on. like he said, he's been doing this for 18 years. i hope he finds incredible happiness for what he does. you have to wonder if the right rift in fox the last few years played a part in this. >> can i say -- i don't want to interrupt. >> no, please. >> i don't think the question to will's point is, is there room for moderates but is there room for journalists? chris wallace was not defined ideologically. is there room for journalism at fox? as you said, brian, the entertainment side had been encroaching on the news side. all of the day side is outnumbered in the entertainment project. that's the fundamental and existential question. >> fox says rotating hosts will fill in so i expect to see roberts and bret baier fill in. but that show is on an island. but what's going on the rest of the time, as you said it's entertainment but resentment entertainment, it's designed to make you get even angrier about president biden, make you hate him even more. here's an example the last couple of days what's happening the rest of the time on fox news. >> every day is now a struggle for joe. walking, talking, reading, remembering. >> president biden desperately wants you to think the economy is excellent. >> what he's doing is killing the economy. it's killing american families. >> prices surging to the highest level in 40 years, just in time to ruin christmas for millions of americans. >> this country is going to hell in a hand basket and you know it. america today is the land of total chaos and confusion. >> this is where we're heading, america. >> i would be so scared to leave the house if i watched that all day. the message there, at the same time they're saying president biden is too weak to be president. they're also saying he's too evil to keep the country alive and the economy has been ruined because of him and by the way, christmas is ruined, they say, as well. the reason i want to play all of that, to give a sense of what's happening in that bubble, it is affecting president biden. he's aware of the noise. here's what he told jimmy fallon on friday night. >> we've been in less than a year. a lot has happened. look, people are afraid. people are worried, and people are getting so much inaccurate information to them. i don't mean about me but about the situation. so they're being told that, you know, armageddon's on the way. the truth is, the economy is grown more than it has any time in close to 60 years. >> and then he went on to acknowledge inflation. look, angst in america is real. there's pandemic uncertainty, economic turmoil, political propaganda and it's affecting biden's polling. a new polling out from abc today saying his poll approval rating, still citing people are concerned about inflation and other issues. but there are two things that are true here, yes, there's real angst in america but also a propaganda machine saying armageddon's on the way. as biden said, armageddon's on the way. there's a portrayal of what's happening in america as a catastrophe, and that's why we're playing the "armageddon" trailer. the word christmas is far apropos of the u.s. coverage, always jumping to the absolute worst-case scenario. the latest variant the example, always assuming the worst. so fox are examining real problems, kind of like a toddler turned a bump into the night about a nightmare of a scary monster under the bed. yes, there's a bump in the night but there's no monster. here's fox doing exactly what i'm describing. lying about gasoline prices. >> gasoline was $1.87 a gallon and now in california over $7, $7.77 to be exact. >> to be exact the actual price of regular gas in california is $4.67. so it's quite high right now, especially in california. gas prices are a real issue. but trump so egregiously exaggerates the issue, he makes it into, as biden said, some kind of armageddon. and this is the kind of inaccurate information i think biden is rightly referencing when he's on the film and this is also what white house aides are calling out when they're criticizing the mainstream media, nonfox media, for being so negative. back to the panel. will, you have been writing about this issue. i'm trying to say two things are true. there's real angst, obviously, real economic woes but also the crazy exaggeration that happens from the doomsday anti-biden media. you say the issue with the aps and cnns and "the new york times" of the world and their coverage, what do you say that issue is? >> i think it does. i think the negativity about inflation that you're talking about has definitely carried over from a lot of mainstream outlets beyond just fox. i think one of the reasons there's so much public angst about inflation, two reasons, one is it's real, obviously. gas prices are higher. supermarket prices are higher. let's not pretend it's real. on the other hand when it's not the only thing you hear about the economy, it's influencing the people who watch fox and related outlets and becomes the prevailing wisdom about the economy. there are other things happening in the economy. there are young people that are getting jobs at $15 to $18 an hour that played $11 a couple years ago. there are millions of families that are able to get out of food insecurity because they're getting the child tax credit that was passed and signed into law by president biden. and, you know, one thing you don't hear about the economy is this year we've seen child poverty cut in half. that's an unbelievable story. that should be one of the five biggest stories of the year. to me, it's important as inflation. you have this negative tone and it bleeds over to the media. the media was very tough on donald trump at times. they had to be. he lied 30,700 times during his presidency. said the media would be tough on trump. now that trump is gone, a lot of people want to prove they can be just as tough on biden and they're missing a bigger story line. biden was elected to restore some of the democratic norms we lost up through january 6th and he's doing that. and there's a bigger picture here and i think the media is very quick to jump on to hear something negative we can say about biden, gas prices are up, which isn't even exactly his fault. and i think we're getting a big picture in the media that kind of lacking the perspective on what's happening in this country right now. >> there's will with the view from the left. essy, what's the view from the right? >> will is right there's a bunch of underreported, good stories and those are important stories to tell us, especially when it comes to eradicating child poverty. that's something that has not gotten enough attention over past administrations. but at the same time, i think the media has been fair and honest in covering joe biden. i think the media, as you like to point out, brian, the media are a nebulous thing but at large, i think the media did a good job covering afghanistan and that blunder and was very importantly tough on joe biden. but i think the proof that we're doing a good job is that democrats are mad at the media for not helping to sell joe biden and their agenda. not our job. and the fact that they're mad at us for not doing that i think is a great endorsement of the job we are doing. we're telling the stories, both the stories that people need to hear about inflation and rising gas prices and supermarket prices and some of the stories they might want to hear about a good economy that might make them feel a little less apocalyptic about what's going on. i think there's a balance and i think to will's point, if we're constantly trying to react to the way we covered trump and prove something, that's really going to get us in trouble. we've got to put blinders back on and do the job and the job is holding powerful people accountable. >> no matter who's in power. se, will, julia, thank you. please come back in a little bit. up next here, why the conventional rules of political journalism no longer apply and, more importantly, what should replace them? jay rosen will have answers. later, frequent fox guest evan nunez, what was he thinking going to trump's new media outlet, actually joining him? we'll get into that too. like pulsing, electric shocks, sharp, stabbing pains, or an intense burning sensation. what is this nightmare? it's how some people describe... shingles. a painful, blistering rash that could interrupt your life for weeks. forget social events and weekend getaways. if you've had chickenpox, the virus that causes shingles is already inside of you. if you're 50 years or older ask your doctor or pharmacist about shingles. ♪ ♪ ♪ (sha bop sha bop) ♪ ♪ are the stars out tonight? (sha bop sha bop) ♪ ♪ ♪ alexa, play our favorite song again. ok. ♪ i only have eyes for you ♪ ray loves vacations. but his diabetes never seemed to take one. everything felt like a 'no'. everything. but then ray went from no to know. with freestyle libre 2, now he knows his glucose levels when he needs to. and... when he wants to. so ray... can be ray. take the mystery out of your glucose levels, and lower your a1c. now you know. try it for free. visit freestylelibre.us your eyes. beautiful on the outside, but if you have diabetes, there can be some not-so-pretty stuff going on inside. it's true, with diabetic retinopathy, excess sugar can damage blood vessels, causing vision loss or even blindness. so remember this: now is the time to get your eyes checked. eye care is important to your long-term diabetes management. see a path forward with actions and treatments that may help your eyes— and protect against vision loss. visit noweyesee.com and take control of your sight. in a recent clinical study, patients using salonpas patch reported reductions in pain severity, using less or a lot less oral pain medicines. and improved quality of life. ask your doctor about salonpas. it's good medicine. the american news media knows how to cover two parties who are basically equal fighting for power. but when one property propagates and perpetuates ignorance and calls into question basic facts and evidence, what is the press supposed to do with that? as the gop goes further down the path that president trump blazed and continues to sow the seeds of conspiracy, how do news outlets change their norms and practices while staying true to the mandates, to the job, which is to get to the truth? i talked about that with jay rosen, the new york university journalism professor and author of "the pressthink blog." and he had a lot of thoughts. jay, thank you so much for joining me. >> pleasure to be with you, brian. >> usually i ask the questions here but i was hoping you could present us with a question. if you could set the table with a question about the press and its role in covering politics right now. what would the question be you would want to present? >> well, the way the press traditionally covers politics is by presuming the existence of two political parties who resemble each other but different ideologies. what happens when you have two parties that increasingly don't very manible each other and one of them is going off in a anti-democratic direction? i think a lot of the routines and assumptions of political journalism just collapse at that point when you have two rakiticly different parties and that to me is probably the biggest conceptual as well as practical problem in political journalism today. >> let's not beat around the bush. you're talking about republican extremism, former president's lies, potential of him running for office again, that's really at the heart of the matter. we've got to call it what it is. >> yes. and the erasure of common sense by figures like trump and others and so much of good journalism is based on the assumption that a world of common fact exists, where at this present moment, we have a political party, political movement trying to erase that from our politics. and that is something the playbook of political journalism has no chapter for. >> so let's write it. what should that new chapter start to say? >> well, i think the first thing is news organizations have to come out and say, we are pro democracy, pro truth, pro science, pro evidence, pro voting. then they have to figure out for each of those new pros, what practices are we going to retire because they don't meet that standard, and what are we going to start to do routinely that we didn't do before? i think there's a lot of work to be done, of course, with those two lists. then i think you have to go public with these changes and explain what you're doing. dial down the insider game horse race coverage at the same time. find a way to keep bad actors off the air even while you report on what they may be doing in the political sphere that's important for maybe people to know. then close the gap through voters with some sort of voters citizens approach, which i wrote about before, you start your election coverage with not what the candidates are doing and who the likely winner is but a simple question, what do you want the candidates to be talking about as they compete for votes? and the reason why you need to understand that first is you need some sort of agenda that can combat the disinformation or propaganda agenda. and having a very good grasp on what voters want the campaign to be about and using that priority list to order your coverage and shape what you're doing in your news production would be really important. final thing i would recommend is some sort of urgency index, by which i mean we have to know how far away from the disaster of a collapsed democracy are we? are we making progress towards that collapse? or are things getting marginally better? we need some way of locating where we are in political space as what's called democratic backsliding progresses. and here it might be smart for journalists to call on the wisdom and knowledge of political scientists who have studied the collapse of democracy and the erosion of democracy in different context so we can know how far along are we in the erosion of american democracy. i think that's an important element too. you put all of those things together and it's not exactly a set of instructions for reform, but it puts you on the right road. >> gives newsrooms tools to stay on that road. >> yes. >> so it's a matter of changing some practices and then thinking about new practices. but what does it mean to have journalism be pro democracy? >> it means you're constantly on the lookout for the unbuilding of democracy through changes in practice in politics. it means that you call out bad actors who are trying to undermine democracy. it means you no longer equate the two political parties. if one is emerging as an anti-democratic force and the other is playing by the rules of the game, you have to differentiate between that. but i'm confident that people of goodwill in journalism can figure this out. i don't think people are as helpless as journalists sometimes present themselves when these kinds of changes are suggested. it's up to them to figure out what a more pro-democracy coverage would look like. but i'm confident they can do it if they take it seriously. >> what's the difference between pro-democracy coverage and just more liberally biased journalism? >> i think there's a difference between the protecting the system by which we have free and fair elections and rooting for a candidate within that system. and essentially you have to keep making that distinction again and again. >> you said on this program a couple years ago that trump had set up an authoritarian news system, which is a phrase that always lived in my head ever since. you're referring to the foxes of the world as these pro-trump megaphones that are authoritarian. >> what i meant more specifically, brian, was there's a percentage of americans now -- we don't know exactly how large it is and i think it's probably around 20%, who get their information about trump and the republican party from trump and the republican party. and they automatically reject what the mainstream news media is saying because they've been sort of taught or conditioned to do that, and because they don't believe it. and that's what i meant by authoritarian news system, is that within the country known as the strongest free press in the world, you have people who are getting their information about trump from trump. that's an authoritarian news system. >> so does any of what we talk about matter? does it matter what abc, cnn, "the new york times," "the washington post" do if we rethink our practices and democracies, does any of it matter if there's a new authoritarian system standing side by side? >> it doesn't matter unless you can close the gap with voters somehow. maybe that 20% isn't reachable at the moment at all but there are others who are. >> for the journalists listening right now, your question or your challenge to them is what? >> don't ask me what to do. what are you going to do? >> jay rosen, thanks so much. for more of the conversation, check out the "reliable sources" podcasts. we're going to work on answers to the question later this hour. we have more "reliable sources," including breaking news from kentucky, in a moment. if you wanna be fresh, you gotta refresh, like subway®. like the new baja steak & jack with tender, thicker-cut steak and... wait sooo you're not coming out of retirement? i'm just here because subway has so much new, they bought time in this press conference to talk about it. now, like i was saying, the new baja steak also has pepper jack cheese, the new baja chipotle sauce... now he can't stop talking. got some black olives, couple pepperoncini's, and some jalapenos... discomfort back there? instead of using aloe, or baby wipes, or powders, try the cooling, soothing relief or preparation h. because your derriere deserves expert care. preparation h. get comfortable with it. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ deposit, plan and pay with easy tools from chase. simplicity feels good. chase. make more of what's yours. cough cough sneeze sneeze... [ sneezing ] needs, plop plop fizz fizz. alka seltzer plus cold relief. dissolves quickly. instantly ready to start working. so you can bounce back fast with alka-seltzer plus. now available for fast sinus relief. xfinity rewards are our way of thanking you just for being with us. enjoy rewards like sing family fun nights! rent sing for $1, then belt out all your favorite tunes from the movie with sing karaoke. plus, see sing 2 in theaters with buy-one-get-one free fandango tickets. join over a million members by signing up for free on the xfinity app. our thanks. your rewards. the tornado disaster across kentucky and several other states is top of mind this weekend. ghastly scars from the tornadoes visible on satellite. and captured on these front pages from kentucky and other states are the words on the front pages "tragic, powerful and devastation." the building housing the local paper in mayfield, kentucky, "the mayfield messenger," you can see it is uninhabitable, as is much of the town. that paper is part of the paxia media group, this is a video of one of their news groups under the rubble this weekend. we see the same situation across the border in tennessee. here's the dresden enterprises office before and after. the damage inside also devastating. of course, these news outlets continue to do their work and cover their community. let's talk to bill evans, vp of paxton media, and the ceo of mayfield publishing which owns the enterprise and four other papers in tennessee. thank you for coming on, despite the awful circumstances. i want to make sure, fist, bill, did all of your staffers make it out okay? >> yes, everyone is safe, just building and other property damage. >> what do you do now? how are you all able to report without your office? >> well, the great thing about paxton media group in this region of kentucky, i oversee six total newspapers and a television station so for years we've been pooling our resource cover news. so we have benton 20 miles east, paducah 25 miles north and, of course, the television station covers the region as well. all of those journalists are covering the events and producing f producing for all platforms. >> and living the events at the same time. you mentioned the tv stations. i was struck some of the towns had 20 minutes warning. there's only so much you can do when you have tornadoes of these calibers coming at you but there were warnings and your station was on the air. is this a situation where meteorologists do save lives by getting warnings out quickly? >> i can't tell you -- and don't make me cry -- i can't tell you the number of people i heard from yesterday morning that said that, that said, your team, your team of trent, noah, caylee, they saved lives tonight. that's exactly what we do. it's not trite to say that. as part of our interview process with any meteorologist, we ask them, what do you think your job is if you come to work for us? they give their answer but we correct them real quickly and say your job is to save lives. that's what you do in severe weather situations. >> you know, behind you, it looks like joplin. it looks like tuscaloosa. there are towns that become forever imprinted by these horrific events. is that what it feels like to you this morning in mayfield? >> well, having covered tornadoes, i grew up in arkansas, and having covered tornadoes the last 40 years, each one is different, each one is unique, but the one common thread beyond all of this instruction that you see is the people that remain and we know we're going to rebuild. we know we have stories to tell, stories of heroic efforts and stories of people that will go on. so, yeah, we're not going to be defined by rubble. we're going to be defined by the spirit that is us and we're going to move forward. >> daniel, to you in tennessee, is your team okay physically? >> yes, physically, we are, thank you. >> i would suspect emotionally might be different. what's it been like the last 36 hours? >> for the team there, it's been rough. we had a staff member whose home was damaged. we've got a really close-knit team there. they came together to help each other out, make sure everybody was safe physically. and after the fact, tried to get into the office yesterday and get what out that we could. >> you all have been covering other disasters as of late. flooding in the region as well. it feels like one after another. so how do you try to keep folks going there? >> it's not easy, you know, when we're asking our staffs to tell a story that they're in the middle of and are part of the devastation. emotionally, it's a challenge for sure. we understand what we do is important and it's an important part of the recovery process of allowing the opportunity to tell their story and to hear other stories. >> right. when we talk about local news and why it needs to survive and thrive, the two of you are showing why. i mean, bill, this is exactly why we need to keep local newspapers and television stations alive. >> exactly. you know, right now we're in event coverage and event coverage is all about what's happening now. but when these cameras go, when the other networks go, we're going to remain. the local newspaper, local television station. then we're going to trans -- we're going to begin telling the effects of these events and these effects are going to be long lasting and impact people's money, safety, health, community, and those are the stories with have to tell going forward. >> absolutely. thank you both for coming on. best of luck in the days ahead. >> thank you. we have more breaking news in the moment. plus, how is fox's pro-russia commentary going down in russia? we watched with the help of translators and we have answers next. our sleigh is now ready, let's get on our way. a mountain of toys to fulfill many wishes. must be carried across all roads and all bridges. and when everyone is smiling and having their fun i can turn my sleigh north because my job here is done. it's not magic that makes more holiday deliveries to homes in the us than anyone else, it's the hardworking people of the united states postal service. this... is the planning effect. this is how it feels to have a dedicated fidelity advisor looking at your full financial picture. this is what it's like to have a comprehensive wealth plan with tax-smart investing strategies designed to help you keep more of what you earn. and set aside more for things like healthcare, or whatever comes down the road. this is "the planning effect" from fidelity. there's a different way to treat hiv. it's once-monthly injectable cabenuva. cabenuva is the only once-a-month, complete hiv treatment for adults who are undetectable. cabenuva helps keep me undetectable. it's two injections, given by a healthcare provider once a month. hiv pills aren't on my mind. i love being able to pick up and go. don't receive cabenuva if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking certain medicines, which may interact with cabenuva. serious side effects include allergic reactions post-injection reactions, liver problems,...and depression. if you have a rash and other allergic reaction symptoms, stop cabenuva and get medical help right away. tell your doctor if you have liver problems or mental health concerns, and if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or considering pregnancy. some of the most common side effects include injection site reactions, fever, and tiredness. if you switch to cabenuva, attend all treatment appointments. with once-a-month cabenuva, i'm good to go. ask your doctor about once-monthly cabenuva. in a recent clinical study, patients using salonpas patch reported reductions in pain severity, using less or a lot less oral pain medicines. and improved quality of life. ask your doctor about salonpas. it's good medicine. woman: i have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. now, there's skyrizi. ♪ things are getting clearer ♪ ♪ yeah i feel free ♪ ♪ to bare my skin, yeah that's all me. ♪ ♪ nothing and me go hand in hand ♪ ♪ nothing on my skin that's my new plan. ♪ ♪ nothing is everything. ♪ woman: keep your skin clearer with skyrizi. most who achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months had lasting clearance through 1 year. in another study, most people had 90% clearer skin at 3 years. and skyrizi is 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. ♪ it's my moment so i just gotta say ♪ ♪ nothing is everything. ♪ skyrizi may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, such as fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or coughs or if you plan to or recently received a vaccine. ♪ nothing is everything. ♪ woman: talk to your dermatologist about skyrizi. learn how abbvie could help you save. ♪ after a night like this, crest has you covered. crest, the official toothpaste of santa. follow us @crest to celebrate the 12 days of crest smiles. well, this is one of those rare sunday mornings when big media news is breaking during the media program. i mentioned at the top of the hour, chris wallace surprising everyone by leaving fox news. it turns out he is joining cnn, specifically to become an actor on cnn plus, the streaming service that will be launching in early 2022. this was announced with an internal memo a few minutes ago. he does a deal with cnn, announced his leaving fox and now the press released being put out by cnn. he said, i'm thrilled to join cnn plus after decades in cable news. i'm excited in the flexibility streaming forwards and finding new ways to tell stories. wallace stating, i'm honored to join booker and his great team and i can't wait to get started. that's chris wallace, fox news veteran, always defined by his sunday morning moderating and his willingness to take on all political figures, right, left and everywhere else. wallace, a veteran of fox, now heading over to this house, to cnn. according to the press release, he'll be hosting a weekday show on cnn plus, the streaming service. so instead of sundays, he will be five days a week, weekdays hosting. now, you probably heard a little bit about cnn plus, probably not a lot. it's a streaming service that will be launching in 2022, with different programming than you already have here on cnn on cable. so you will have different programming, including, as we know, chris wallace on cnn plus. that's the breaking news during our hour on media. now we turned to something we had planned about right wing media and the rest of fox news. i mentioned earlier, chris wallace has been increasingly a man on an island at a man at a network that's become more and more radical. i guess we'll find out from him if that's why he decided to leave. but it is striking that figures like tucker carlson and others on fox are rooting for putin. this week newsmax ran a cover story titled "vlad the great" and tucker seems to be justifying a potential russian invasion of ukraine. shows a cross, fox, ean and newsmax showing up anti-biden, pro-putin messages on the regular. look at this, biden saying putin wants to keep western border secure. we wanted to know what russians were saying about all of this. so matthew chance tells us. >> translator: this is the kind of political analysis russia state-controlled television apparently likes. a channel in moscow putting together this montage of lines from a favorite anchor. please show us tucker carlson, the host says. he's the man playing out all of the complaints against president biden, she explained. but it's his defense of russia's threat against ukraine, the kremlin back channel, putin wants to highlight. >> he does not want belgium but his western border secure. that's why he does not want ukraine to join nato and that makes sense. imagine how we would feel if mexico and canada became satellites of chiang. >> and that's incidentally what the kremlin said and to no surprise, the studio guests agree. >> translator: excellent performance, claims this editor of a russian newspaper. we could only have solidarity of this view. u.s. officials say nato poses no threat and this russian military buildup is unjustified. >> wouldn't it be great if we got along with russia now? >> reporter: for years russia honed in on controversial praise from the u.s., including from the former president himself, and often used it to justify its stance at home. like former president trump taking the side of putin over u.s. intelligence agencies ob russia meddling in the u.s. election. russia denied it, trump at first agreed. >> i have president putin, he just said it's not russia. i will say this, i don't see any reason why it would be. >> reporter: at the time even russia tv anchors seemed surprised. >> hello? >> reporter: president biden has been more critical of putin in public. a tougher stance that's helped make the u.s. president much less popular in russia than his predecessor. where criticism of president biden is widespread -- >> there's nothing we can possibly gain -- >> reporter: -- and american critics held up for praise. >> as well as justified actions, russia also promotes contrarian u.s. support to yungd line divisions in american society, casting the situation as unstable compared to europe, where it is crushed. listing only support for russia, while only blocking out the criticism distorts what the u.s. really thinks, leaving many russians dangerously unaware of just how the divided the u.s. and russia have become. brian, back to you. >> thank you, matthew, for that report. so what's going on here? we'll talk more with julia ioffe. she's writing about this for pluck. this fox news, newsmax, aon is not new but happening during scary times in terms of tensions between the u.s. and ukraine. >> it's not new, unfortunately. i would say it started quite a while ago, about a decade ago, when american right wing organizations started reaching out like the world communist families, and they started reaching out ho right wing organizations in russia started working with them and it really hit a fever under trump because you had trump talking about putin as a partner, as an equal, as somebody we should have a good relationship with, that we should respect. and that we shouldn't criticize. and what has developed in the last five or six years is basically this feedback loop, you either have the right wing putting out certain memes, tropes, story lines and the russian state press or trolls on social media amplifying that message. until it, you know, becomes more mainstream. or you have russian trolls or russian state media putting out tropes and story lines and the right wing press amplifying them. and now it's become basically one feedback loop where, frankly, i can't tell a lot of times the kinks between the coverage on the first channel 1, the main state broadcaster coverage on russian state tv of the black lives matter protests, social justice, racial justice protests was that these were all looters, terrorists, that this was all about humiliating white people. then they picked up the same trope of biden being barely with it and having one foot in the grave and not being fully cognitively present. now you have russian state media echoing a lot of republican tropes that democrats are socialists, that they're radicals, about to take the country into soviet-style socialism and republicans are the only ones who are sane. on the republican side you saw in 2016, as soon as it became public, that the american intelligence community felt that the russians helped donald trump win the election. approval for russia, for vladimir putin among self-identified republicans went through the roof. so it kind of makes sense. >> in a twisted way, it does. julia, thank you for explaining to us. >> you're welcome. busy morning on "reliable sources." more news in just a moment. s. okay now let me flip it. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (burke) this is why you want farmers claim forgiveness... [echoing] claim forgiveness-ness, your home premium won't go up just because of this. (woman) wow, that's something. (burke) you get a whole lot of something with farmers policy perks. [echoing] get a quote today. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ i've been telling everyone... the secret to great teeth is having healthy gums. crest advanced gum restore. detoxifies below the gumline... and restores by helping heal gums in as little as 7 days. crest. the #1 toothpaste brand in america. i strip on public transit. i strip with the guys. i strip all by myself. breathe right strips open your nose for relief you can feel right away, helping you take in air more easily, day or night. ray loves vacations. but his diabetes never seemed to take one. everything felt like a 'no'. everything. but then ray went from no to know. with freestyle libre 2, now he knows his glucose levels when he needs to. and... when he wants to. so ray... can be ray. take the mystery out of your glucose levels, and lower your a1c. now you know. try it for free. visit freestylelibre.us today's verdict wasn't just an indictment of smol len, but the entire leftist media appara apparatus. >> many saying it's also a guilty verdict for the media. the media is complicit in pushing the hate crime narrative and the media is guilty as well. how true is that? >> there's a little truth in it. as usual, i think lauren fox was going too far. when this story broke, you have to remember, hate crimes were on the rise. i think what a lot of journalists did, they wanted to be activists on this story, and they got a little too far ahead. they stopped calling the crime alleged pretty quickly. i don't think we asked enough questions initially, but you also have to remember, according to researchers, less than 1% of hate crimes are faked, are not real. you'd really have to suspend disbelief to think in the immediate that this was a lie. of course, as information and details came out, it became clear that the story didn't make any sense. i think any time journalists want to be activists, they run the risk of telling the wrong story. >> skepticism, we've got to keep applying skepticism. let's do that with the next story, devin nunes quitting congress to try to run trump's media company, the company that says it's going to launch a social media platform, but we don't know if it's ever going to happen or not. will bunch, what's he actually joining? >> i think he's joining the successor to trump vodka and trump steaks, to be frank about it. this seems like a continuation of trump's ability to combine politics with being a scam artist. so many questions about this company. the great journalist jug lagoon this week published a story showing there's plagiarism in some of the documents this company has used to raise money. it's being investigated by two federal agencies right now. i don't think that's political. i think there are many questions about this company which has seen its market value skyrocket to $2 billion which is just unbelievable. we've always worried about how trump might try to cash in on the presidency. this is something that needs a much closer look. >> as leggum said, it's already investigated by the feds. last story. brian williams signing off of nbc and msnbc, he signed off with this warning. >> darkness on the edge of town has spread into the local neighborhoods. at the bowling alley, the school board and the grocery store. and it must be acknowledged and answered for. they've decided to burn it all down with us inside. that should scare you to no end. >> sc, that's the warning we do need from news anchors, especially the ones that have been impartial all these years. >> well, sure. we do that all the time. we rye to give these warnings about just how bad our state of politics is, just how badly republicans and donald trump still want to dismantle our democratic institutions including the free press. i think those are stories that are important. i will just say, listen, brian williams is a very talented journalist and broadcaster. he's a nice person, but he lied repeatedly, and i don't think we should forget that every single time we talk about his legacy. >> all right. fair enough. thank you everybody. thanks for joining this hour. we have the latest on the breaking news about chris wallace joining cnn plus. it's up on cnn.com right now. we'll see you back here this time next week. ♪ ♪ darkest days. dozens dead as a series of tornadoes churn across the midwest. >> i want to find my wife. >> as rescuers scramble to find survivors, do they have the help they need? kentucky governor beshear and fema administrator deanne criswell join us. mandate debate