Fox News anchor Howard Kurtz condemned network contributor Mollie Hemingway for naming the alleged whistleblower on his show.
Hemingway mentioned Eric Ciaramella, 33, a career CIA analyst, on Sunday’s episode of Media Buzz and argued that “the media should be in the business of sharing information that is in the public interest.” Kurtz, however, disagreed both at the time and on the network’s The Daily Briefing the next day.
“I don’t think it’s the role of the media to disclose the identity of the whistleblower,” Kurtz said. “As you know, a name came up on my program yesterday. I don’t think that should have happened. Mollie Hemingway says that she was simply repeating a name that had been bandied about by certain sites, and no one had told her that Fox and other organizations were not using the name.”
“First of all, we have no independent reporting that says this is the guy despite what some partisan sites are saying,” Kurtz continued. “And even if we did have independent reporting, I don’t see why the media should be baited into naming somebody because I think it violates the spirit of the Whistleblower Protection Act.”
Hemingway was the second to name Ciaramella as the whistleblower on the network. Last week, Lars Larson, who was a guest on Outnumbered Overtime, named him. The network has told hosts that they should not name the alleged whistleblower because “Fox News has not confirmed or independently verified the name of the whistleblower.”
Ciaramella was identified as the whistleblower by RealClearInvestigations last month. Lawyers for the whistleblower responded by calling attempts to out their client the “pinnacle of irresponsibility.”
A career CIA analyst, Ciaramella was Ukraine director on the National Security Council during the end of the Obama administration and remained there during the early months of the Trump administration when he was briefly acting senior director for European and Russian affairs. The Washington Examiner reported last month that he is now a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia on the National Intelligence Council, reporting to the director of national intelligence.
