CNN pundit Brian Stelter and a guest on his program suggested there are media companies that exist solely to attack presumptive Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden, a phenomenon they said has no equivalent on the Left.
“When you see entire media companies essentially exist to tear down Joe Biden, is there an equivalent of that on the Left, tearing down Trump?” Stelter asked guest Errin Haines during his weekly program Sunday.
“There really isn’t,” replied Haines, an editor-at-large at the 19th. “What I would say is it’s really a diet of this type of information that a lot of these voters are getting. A lot of the voters I talk to, I can — when I interview them, I do hear them saying a lot of the talking points that sound very familiar from some of these shows that I try to listen to when I’m out on the campaign trail or when I’m home, watching TV. You know, you can hear these comments being echoed by voters.”
Earlier in the segment, Stelter, who often criticizes leading conservative pundits and right-of-center media companies for their coverage of Trump, played a series of clips showing attacks some critics have leveled against Biden in recent weeks.
“It kind of explains everything about what is broken in our media environment because there’s all of these media outlets, all of these radio stars constantly attacking, fueling hatred of the other side,” Stelter said. “Am I right to say this happens on the Left and the Right, but it’s more severe on the right currently?”
Trump often attacks members of the media for unfavorable coverage of his statements, policies, or tweets. He has gone so far as to call journalists the “enemy of the people” and suggested he will never be treated fairly by the press.
The president has also seized on some media reports that have either turned out to be misleading or untrue.
“NBC NEWS is wrong again! They cite ‘sources’ which are constantly wrong. Problem is, like so many others, the sources probably don’t exist, they are fabricated, fiction!” Trump tweeted after the network corrected a 2018 report about THE alleged wiretapping of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. “NBC, my former home with the Apprentice, is now as bad as Fake News CNN. Sad!”
Most recently, Stelter has admonished some conservative outlets for what he called an “obsession” with Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s case amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s so disappointing to look at what we’re seeing from right-wing media these days,” Stelter said in May. “Where there is such an obsession with the deep state and these revelations about the Russia probe. … They’re treating the Michael Flynn story like it’s a bigger deal than the deaths of 2,000 Americans a day.”
