CNN host Brian Stelter reacted with outrage on Wednesday when a conservative reporter suggested his network was applying a double-standard to its coverage of Hunter Biden’s controversial emails.
The moment: Susan Ferrechio, the Washington Examiner’s chief congressional correspondent, appeared alongside Stelter, a professional media critic, on BBC Radio 4’s “The Media Show.”
Stelter dismissed recent reporting by the New York Post and other right-leaning news outlets about alleged attempts by Biden to leverage the influence of his father, Joe Biden, in lucrative deals with Ukrainian and Chinese companies.
- “It was part of last season’s episode, called ‘Impeachment,'” Stelter said. “The idea that there’s a lot new here doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
- Stelter accused the conservative media of “asymmetric nastinesss” and said, “There’s a lot more indecency and B.S. — I’m not sure I can curse on this program — but B.S. being spread by the right.”
- “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,” he added.
Ferrechio countered that the elder Biden, a former vice president, is the Democratic nominee “running for president of the United States, and this is serious.”
- “This is not last year’s news. It’s whether or not his son was coordinating to get him to talk to these Ukraine oligarchs and he was benefiting from it. I mean it’s really dirty, and it needs to be looked at,” she said.
- “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.”
Regarding Stelter’s concerns about the veracity of the Hunter Biden story, Ferrechio wondered where that skepticism was during more than two years of media speculation about alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
That’s when things got heated.
“I know you’re bitter,” Stelter said. “I understand that you have a lot of resentment about this.”
“Now we have ethics? Oh, OK,” Ferrechio shot back. “Now we have ethics.”
“Don’t you dare!” Stelter exclaimed. “Don’t you dare act like newsrooms didn’t have ethics in 2017 and 2018.”
“I know they didn’t! You can ‘don’t dare’ me all you want, Brian. 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,” Ferrechio said.
CNN’s “house eunuch”: Stelter is widely despised and ridiculed on the right as a lackey for his network and the rest of the mainstream news media.
- Fox News host Tucker Carlson once called Stelter CNN’s “house eunuch,” saying he simply parrots proclamations from his tiny king, [CNN President] Jeff Zucker.
On Sunday’s episode of his show, “Reliable Sources,” Stelter derided the Biden scandal as “whataboutism” and suggested it was both a News Corp ploy to make viewers “stay mad and stay tuned” and a Russian disinformation campaign.
By contrast, Stelter last March delivered a full-throated defense of the way CNN and much of the news media credulously covered the Russia investigation.
- “Reporters don’t ask questions for no good reason,” he said. “Speculation doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”
- Soon thereafter, the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report effectively debunked allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.
