Brian Stelter, NBC’s Olympics | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room

CNN’s Brian Stelter and a panelist teed off on President Joe Biden’s administration for what they deemed an “outrageous” position on the free press on Sunday’s episode of Reliable Sources.

Stelter cited a pair of incidents this week in which Biden officials more or less told the press that they would have to take the government’s version of events at face value on stories regarding Russia and Syria. But in neither case did the White House back up their charge with detailed evidence, and it has bristled at media scrutiny of their claims.

Stelter slammed the administration for imploring the press to “trust us,” adding, “That is not what journalists do. That is not what journalists are meant to do. Journalists are meant to probe and press for the evidence, regardless of who is in power.”

“I think the Biden administration thought just because they weren’t Trump they were going to get some kind of free ride, and it’s outrageous!” agreed David Zurwarik, former media columnist for the Baltimore Sun. “We trust no one. That is what we do.”

Stelter and Zurwarik are absolutely right. The press serves a vital role in holding government leaders accountable, and no one should get a free pass.

The Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony in Beijing on Friday ended up a ratings dud for NBC.

The ceremony drew “nearly 14 million” TV viewers, according to a release from the network— making it one of the least viewed in Olympic history.

Compared to the 23.8 million people who tuned into the last winter games ceremony in 2018 in Pyeongchang, viewership dropped 43 percent overall. Only 8.7 million tuned into primetime programming with NBC’s Mike Tirico and Savannah Guthrie, who led the coverage of the opening ceremony.

The viewing audience was also significantly lower than last year’s Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony in Tokyo, which averaged 17 million viewers throughout the program.

Add in the ongoing controversy over how to cover China’s horrific human rights abuses and the total lack of fans due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and these Olympics are just plain less fun than they’ve been in previous years.

And one of the things that has been consistently fun about the Olympics — Leslie Jones’ off-the-wall wacky commentary — is apparently getting squashed by NBC Sports, as Jones lamented in a Twitter post.