Dan Abrams Questions Brian Stelter’s Defiance of John Malone: ‘Either Incredibly Brave or Incredibly Reckless’

NewsNation host and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams questioned CNN’s Brian Stelter over his commentary in the wake of Jeff Zucker’s ouster from the network.

Abrams noted that some have used Zucker’s departure as an opportunity to bash CNN for ratings woes or the slant of their news coverage. Abrams turned his focus to Stelter’s fiery monologue this past Sunday in which he went after critics who say CNN has become a left-wing opinion network.

“Yes, CNN has a very strong news-gathering operation,” Abrams said. “But it is also simply a fact that CNN has veered deeply into the opinion territory, the left-leaning opinion territory. And look, you can make a solid argument that their ratings would be worse if they were just doing newscasts all day, but to say otherwise about their content is just dishonest, and that’s the bigger problem for me. Just own it. MSNBC and Fox are a bit more intellectually honest about what they do.”

Abrams suggested Stelter’s defensiveness was a message to John Malone, a billionaire media mogul and top Discovery shareholder who has criticized CNN’s editorial direction in recent years. Discovery happens to be in the process of acquiring CNN, and there are outstanding questions about whether Malone was one of the reasons for Zucker’s ouster.

During an interview with The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta about the post-Zucker state of the network on Sunday, Stelter called Malone’s remarks “offensive” and added that Zucker found them “quite disturbing.” Abrams said it was “either incredibly brave or incredibly reckless” for Stelter to defend Zucker and attack Malone when the latter is the top shareholder of CNN’s future parent company.

Auletta told Stelter, “If I was at CNN and I was an employee and I loved working under Jeff Zucker for understandable reasons I would be concerned.” Abrams agreed, adding, “any time a new boss comes in and the company isn’t performing well, the key employees should be concerned.”

Watch above, via NewsNation.