CNN’s media reporter Brian Stelter said Tuesday he wants Fox News host Sean Hannity to disclose why he has given Stelter the nickname “Humpty Dumpty.”
“The disclosure for me about Hannity is that, he calls me Humpty Dumpty for some reason, don’t know why,” Stelter said Tuesday morning.
He later told the Washington Examiner that he was joking. “I wasn’t asking Hannity to disclose why he insults me, I was jokingly disclosing to the viewers that he insults me,” he said.
“I think he’s a really interesting phenomenon,” says @brianstelter of Sean Hannity. “He does blur these lines. He says he’s not a journalist, he says journalism is dead, and yet he calls his show real news and says he has anonymous sources, so he tries to have it both ways” pic.twitter.com/2uDfQLtvJe
— New Day (@NewDay) April 17, 2018
He made the comment as part of a discussion on whether Hannity should have disclosed to viewers that he had a relationship with President Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen. Hannity said on his show Monday night that his relationship was “minimal” and involved real estate.
But Stelter and others said the rules of journalism mean he should have disclosed that fact. Stelter said some of the issue is that Hannity “blurs these lines” between journalism and reporting.
“He says he’s not a journalist, he says journalism is dead, and yet he calls his show real news and says he has anonymous sources, so he tries to have it both ways,” he said.
This story was updated to reflect comment from Stelter that he was joking about his initial question to Hannity.
