LISTEN: Susan Ferrechio Spars with CNN’s Brian Stelter in Heated Clash Over Media’s Reporting on Dossier Versus Biden Emails
Veteran journalist Susan Ferrechio sparred with CNN’s Brian Stelter on Wednesday over whether the media has applied a standard to Hunter Biden’s emails that it failed to apply to the infamous Trump dossier.
“The bottom line is this deserves scrutiny by all media outlets, and if they pick and choose this and decide it’s not worth their time, I think that’s showing real bias,” Ferrechio said during a panel discussion on BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show, hosted by Amol Rajan.
Ferrechio, a reporter for The Washington Examiner, said new outlets have a duty to cover explosive allegations about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son unveiled by The New York Post last week, and slammed Stelter’s effort to dismiss the issue as part of “last season’s episode.”
“This is not last year’s news,” Ferrechio said. “It’s whether or not his son was coordinating to get him to talk to these Ukrainian oligarchs, and he was benefiting from it. It’s really dirty.”
Stelter replied, “I said it was last season. You’re saying it’s new. I think the bottom line is we don’t know what is real and what is fake in these emails if there is anything real in them.”
“Yeah, but that didn’t stop anyone from reporting Mueller and the dossier,” Ferrechio shot back, leading Stelter to suggest Ferrechio had a personal vendetta, saying. “I know you’re bitter. I understand that you have a lot of resentment about that,” Stelter said.
“Now we have ethics? Oh, OK,” Ferrechio replied.
“Don’t you dare,” Stelter fulminated. “Don’t you dare act like newsrooms didn’t have ethics in 2017 and 2018.”
“You can ‘don’t dare’ me all you want, Brian,” Ferrechio said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, so say whatever you want. It’s my view, and I have a right to say it.”
The Steele Dossier compiled in 2016 on then-candidate Donald Trump suggested, among other things, that Trump engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy” with Russian officials to hack Democrats in that year’s presidential election. CNN and other major media outlets began widely covering the dossier in 2017. Its claims were largely undermined by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report in 2019, which said his investigation “did not establish” any conspiracy or coordination.
Media outlets including CNN, ABC, and NBC have declined to cover the allegations related to Biden. Fox News has covered them at length, while CBS News’ Major Garrett wrote on Twitter Tuesday evening that sources connected to the FBI and Justice Department had confirmed for the network that the allegations were not part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
