Brian Stelter Rips Fox News for ‘Shocking Deference’ to Trump’s ‘Toothless’ Election Claims

CNN’s Brian Stelter blasted Fox News for treating President Donald Trump’s 2020 election claims as plausible instead of acknowledging the increasing likelihood of Joe Biden’s victory.

As Biden appears on the brink of clinching the election, the Trump campaign continues to advance their voter fraud claims, and numerous people on Fox News have given breath to the evidence-free charges of mass impropriety. On Friday, Jake Tapper called on the Murdoch family and Fox to recognize Biden’s likely win and help facilitate a peaceful transition of power before there’s any chance of violent unrest.

When Stelter joined Tapper to discuss this later on, he said CNN obtained memos from Fox saying when the network won’t identify Biden as President-Elect even after he officially crosses the 270 electoral vote threshold.

These memos direct Fox stars…to avoid language like ‘president-elect’ because of the president’s legal challenges. These are long shot legal challenges…but Fox is taking these challenges very seriously, showing deference to the president. After 25,000 false and misleading claims from this president, Fox still assumes he’s telling the truth.

A Fox News spokesperson tells Mediaite there are no memos and there was no network-wide editorial guidance from Fox News.

After outlining the “troubling” impact Fox’s coverage could have by treating Trump’s “toothless” claims as “serious pursuits,” Stelter told Tapper that the lawsuits are the reason why Fox won’t call Biden president-elect.

“It’s striking guidance. It gets to the broader issue of how Fox is misinforming the public,” Stelter said. “The opinion hosts and these news anchors at Fox are showing shocking deference to these toothless lawsuit threats.”

Tapper followed up on that by remarking “if you are a Fox reporter or anchor, somebody not on the opinion side, and you’re going to abide by this crazy instruction, you might as well hand in your press credential at the same time. You can’t be taken seriously as a journalist.”

Watch above, via CNN.

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