CNN’s Brian Stelter faced questions about his network’s coverage of various issues and the appearance that mistakes “all go in one direction.”
During a conference on “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” at the University of Chicago, the media correspondent was confronted about his own network’s coverage.
A freshman student who identified himself as Christopher Phillips noted, “You’ve all spoken extensively about Fox News being a purveyor of disinformation. But CNN is right up there with them.”
“They push the Russian collusion hoax, they push the Jussie Smollett hoax, they smear Justice Kavanaugh as a rapist, and they also smeared Nick Sandmann as a White supremacist. And yes, they dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop affair as pure Russian disinformation,” he continued.
Phillips asked, “With mainstream corporate journalists becoming little more than apologists and cheerleaders for the regime, is it time to finally declare that the canon of journalistic ethics is dead or no longer operative?”
He also claimed, “All the mistakes of the mainstream media and CNN, in particular, seem to magically all go in one direction.”
“Are we expected to believe that this is all just some sort of random coincidence, or is there something else behind it?” Phillips asked.
Watch the video below:
Brian Stelter just got called tf out by a college freshman for every major hoax CNN has pushed.
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 7, 2022
His response was “that’s a popular right-wing narrative.”
pic.twitter.com/bOvE9wDiAD
Stelter responded, “It’s too bad it’s time for lunch.”
“There’s a clock that says 30 seconds, but I think my honest answer to you, and I will come over and talk in more detail after this, is that I think you’re describing a different channel than I watch. But I understand that that is a popular right-wing narrative about CNN,” he continued.
Stelter went on:
“I think it’s important, when talking about shared reality and democracy, all these networks all these news outlets have to defend democracy. And when they screw up, admit it.”
Finally, Stelter said, “And with regards to the regime, I think you mean President Biden? The last time I spoke with a Biden aide, we yelled at each other. So that’s the reality of the news business, that people don’t see, that people don’t hear.”
“They imagine that it’s a situation that simply is not. But I think your question, it speaks to the failure of journalism to show our work and show the reality of how our profession operates. We have a lot of work to do,” he added.
Phillips’ comments refer to CNN’s 2019 coverage of an encounter between Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann and Native American activists, and its coverage of actor Jussie Smollett’s false claim that he was the victim of a hate crime.
Additionally, he pointed to some CNN pundits who dismissed the contents of the laptop of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, as Russian disinformation.