Confider #94: Where in the World is Caitlyn Jenner?
EXCLUSIVE — THE INVISIBLE WOMAN: Reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, currently the only trans woman with a paid cable news deal, has been absent from Fox News airwaves for nearly half a year—and it’s not exactly clear why. From March 2022—when Fox News announced to great fanfare that it hired Jenner—through mid-August 2023, she appeared at least 34 times, according to an analysis by Media Matters for America. Half of those appearances were on the midday “hard news” shows such as America Reports and The Story with Martha MacCallum, but she popped up several times on conservative primetime opinion programs such as Hannity and even appeared twice on the panel of Greg Gutfeld’s late-night right-wing “comedy” show. However, those appearances completely dried up last summer and she hasn’t shown up on the network since an Aug. 14 interview on Fox News @ Night where Jenner talked about how she had just recently played golf with Donald Trump. Confider reached out to Jenner’s management to ask about her Fox absence and to clarify whether she was still under contract with the network. They never responded, but a Fox News spokesperson soon contacted Confider to state that Jenner remains in “excellent standing” as an on-air contributor. While Jenner vanished from Fox News airwaves, she has sat down on other networks and podcasts. Last month, she made waves in an interview with Monty Python legend John Cleese for Britain’s wannabe Fox News channel GB News. Theoretically, the overloaded news cycle over the past few months could have crowded out Jenner, whose punditry mostly focuses on trans issues and women’s sports. But according to Media Matters’ internal database, at least 265 segments mentioning trans issues have aired on weekday Fox News programming since Jenner’s last appearance. On top of that, there have been at least 98 weekday segments mentioning trans sports or trans athletes since Aug. 14.
EXCLUSIVE — BRINGING THE HEAT:New York Times climate correspondent David Gelles has deleted a LinkedIn post in which he touted remarks he made at a Times dinner in Davos about climate change. “After the year that was the hottest in recorded history, with climate change ravaging every corner of the globe, I implored a room full of CEOs, diplomats and NGO leaders to step up their urgency and begin considering truly radical political and economic interventions,” he wrote in the post, which was also added to his Instagram stories. “Rather than more of the same, it’s time to begin imagining what a society truly transformed will look like, and to start identifying the hurdles that make disruptions to the status quo appear uneconomical, impractical or politically untenable. The hour is late, and it’s incumbent on those with the capital and the clout to start deploying the whole of their resources toward the climate crisis.” Some Times staffers who spotted the posts and spoke with Confider questioned whether it violated the Times ethics guidelines by crossing the line into advocacy. After Confider reached out to Gelles and the paper for comment, he deleted the post. “As he has produced some of The Times's most vital and wide-ranging journalism on the politics and global impacts of climate change, David's approach to reporting has always been impartial, unflinching and incisive,” a Times spokesperson emailed Confider. “While he brought this same ethos to his role speaking at an event at the World Economic Forum, subsequent social media posts about the event may have been misunderstood to convey something other than impartiality, and as such have since been deleted.” Gelles did not respond to a request for comment.
NEARLY DEPARTED: Another on-air journalist could be headed for the exits at NBC News. Ben Collins, a senior reporter covering disinformation at the outlet, has told multiple people he will be leaving the organization in the next few months, multiple sources told Confider. Collins, a former Daily Beast editor and reporter, was briefly barred by NBC in late 2022 from covering Elon Musk and Twitter on air after he criticized Musk. In September, he wrote on BlueSky that he’d be leaving journalism early this year “unless things dramatically change.” When reached by Confider on Monday, Collins said his departure wasn’t a done deal but that he’s “probably leaving” to write a book. An NBC News spokesperson said it does not comment on personnel.