‘A Failure of Journalism’: CNN’s Brian Stelter Eviscerates Fox News, Anchors Faulkner and Hemmer, for ‘Easy’ Trump Interview
CNN’s Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter attacked Fox News over its coronavirus town hall with President Donald Trump Tuesday, calling it “a failure of journalism” and claiming that the network failed to challenge the president’s “misinformation.”
After CNN anchor Brianna Keilar noted that President Trump opted to appear on Fox News Tuesday afternoon rather than stage a briefing at that time (the White House is scheduled to brief at 5:30 p.m. ET), Stelter said, “Yes, for a two-hour virtual town hall that had quite a bit of misinformation and wishful thinking that’s not based in reality.”
“I understand the president wants to give a positive message to the country and he wants people to know this will end someday, but he’s talking about returning to normal by Easter, that’s on April 12th this year, and public health experts say that would be incredibly dangerous,” Stelter explained. “To suddenly go back to normal would be incredibly dangerous and would be devastating to the economy because so many more people would die. The president is out there on Fox saying this, and not getting challenged much, not getting push-back the way he at least gets at press briefings and would get on any other network.”
Stelter declared, “I think Brianna, this is an example of the Fox News presidency at its very worst, because he can go on a channel that lets him say whatever he wants, doesn’t challenge him, goes so easy on him, he ends up misinforming the public,” before noting, “it’s a feedback loop that’s been continuing, because he’s hearing these ideas on Fox about trying to open up the country right away, and then he’s repeating them on Fox.”
Later on in the interview, Stelter said, “It’s pathetic to be talking about car accidents. If car accidents were doubling and tripling every day, we would take action as a country to fix that problem. We would take the cars off the road. And for the hosts on Fox News, the news anchors like Bill Hemmer and Harris Faulkner, to not challenge that kind of b.s.? Well that’s a failure of journalism.”
Watch above via CNN.
