CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy questioned an organization dedicated to protecting the freedom of the press because their latest initiative included a partnership with Fox News.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Committee to Protect Journalists announced a new campaign called “Protect Press Freedom” on Friday. The two groups announced partnerships with ABC, Bloomberg, the Boston Globe, Fox News, the New Republic, NowThis, and Time.
“The threats facing our free press today impact us all, no matter where we get our news, and the breadth of organizations that have joined us in this effort underscores the reach of those challenges,” Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a press release. “We look forward to working with this large and growing group to speak out strongly about the importance of preserving our First Amendment protections and engage the American public in standing up for their right to information.”
Darcy, who wrote Friday’s edition of Brian Stelter’s newsletter, wrote that he “found this strange, given that the press release said part of the campaign is aimed at ‘countering inflammatory rhetoric targeting the press,’ both at home and abroad.” Darcy went on to question why they’d partner with Fox because “it’s hard to imagine a domestic organization (outside the White House) that does more to attack the press than Fox.”
The CNN media reporter wrote that he spoke with Brown and repeatedly asked him if Fox lived up to the bill of “countering inflammatory rhetoric.”
Brown added, “We’ll hear from anyone,” when he was asked whether there were any publications that he would be hesitant to work with on this new campaign.
While Darcy was hitting Fox for what he claimed was the network’s failure to counter inflammatory remarks about the press, it should also be noted that CNN president Jeff Zucker has made critical remarks of Fox’s reporters and of the network itself.
In an October interview between Stelter and Zucker, the network head stated that he disagreed with Stelter’s assessment that there is a news side and an opinion side at Fox News.
“You often say that there’s this difference between their prime-time shows and the news side. There is no difference and I think that I don’t see it that way. I know that you report it that way a lot, I think you’re wrong,” Zucker stated and then directed Stelter to “watch it” when he was asked to back up the claim.
