CNN media reporter Brian Stelter offered rare praise for his network’s longtime rival, Fox News, on Thursday.
Stelter credited the conservative cable channel with supporting CNN, MS NOW and Politico during the previous several days, as the outlets faced a press ban imposed by Donald Trump.
He made the comments on air alongside Dana Bash after all three organizations reported that they had regained access to the White House earlier Thursday afternoon.
A federal judge had ordered the White House that morning to restore the outlets’ access.
Bash first pointed to the solidarity shown by Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS, which had all declined to participate in the president’s press pool coverage since Monday.
“It is so important to underscore the solidarity that the other networks—and even beyond the television networks—other news organizations have shown with CNN and Politico and MS NOW because everybody understands the stakes,” Bash said.
She said the dispute extended beyond competition among news organizations. “It’s about the free press writ large,” Bash added.
Stelter then singled out Fox News, the most right-leaning of the major networks mentioned.
CNN reporter Brian Stelter offered rare praise to longtime rival Fox News on Thursday for standing behind CNN, MS NOW and Politico during Donald Trump’s press ban.
A federal judge ordered the White House to restore the outlets’ access Thursday morning. By noon, all three had been allowed back into the building, prompting Stelter and Dana Bash to discuss the development live on Inside Politics.
He said the episode had crossed traditional party lines.
“Fox News has been a real ally of CNN and the other major networks this week. And frankly, Dana, I think that’s partly because Fox… it’s thinking about the past and [Barack] Obama,” Stelter said.
During his first term, Obama attempted to exclude Major Garrett, then one of the cable network’s prominent journalists, from a multipool interview in 2009. The effort failed after ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC protested.
In a joint statement issued this time, the same networks declared: “No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
Stelter told Bash that Fox was likely also considering “what happens when a Democrat is back in the Oval Office, and whether some Democrat would pull a stunt like this.”
“And then again more broadly, what are we going through in America?” Stelter continued. He described the nearly weeklong ban as one of several recent “examples of democratic backsliding.”
“Yes, this is a democracy, but there are times it’s been a healthier democracy,” he said.
“Backsliding is real, and scholars who study autocratic behavior say they see it happening every day, coming out 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Both journalists praised the conservative cable network for standing in solidarity against a Republican president.
Fox News lead White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich also criticized the ban in her role as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association on Saturday.
Reporters had just been turned away from the White House, confirming their credentials had been revoked. Trump announced the ban in a Truth Social post the day before.
‘Today’s action revoking access for journalists from CNN, POLITICO, and MSNOW violates the First Amendment.
‘The implications extend beyond these organizations: a standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future,’ Heinrich wrote, calling on the administration ‘to immediately restore’ their access.
Bash, on Thursday, also personally thanked Fox DC Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton, who currently chairs the television pool that effectively suspended the ban and sent the email announcing it would stop such coverage.
‘I personally say thank you to him,’ Bash said, framing his actions as ‘a profile in courage and doing what is right.’
