CNN’s Brian Stelter credited Fox News for being a “real ally” to his network and MS NOW as both outlets have dealt with the chaos surrounding President Donald Trump’s White House ban.
Stelter appeared alongside Dana Bash on “Inside Politics” on Thursday, shortly after CNN, MS NOW, and Politico all reported that they had regained access to the White House after being turned away that morning. Hours earlier, a judge had rejected the president’s media ban.
Bash opened the discussion by highlighting the support the banned outlets have received from their competitors.
“It is so important to underscore the solidarity that the other networks and even beyond the television networks, that other news organizations have shown with CNN and Politico and MS NOW because everybody understands the stakes,” Bash said, adding that the situation is about the “free press writ large.”
Stelter then singled out Fox News as an “ally” in the fight, arguing that the network understands the battle over press freedoms goes far beyond whoever happens to occupy the Oval Office.
“Fox News has been a real ally of CNN and the other major networks this week. And frankly, I think that’s partly because Fox, yeah, it’s thinking about the past and [Barack] Obama, but it’s also thinking about what happens when a Democrat is back the Oval Office and whether some Democrat would pull a stunt like this,” he said.
The CNN media analyst went on to warn about the state of American democracy.
“We’re going through a situation where we’re seeing examples of Democratic backsliding. Yes, this is a democracy, but there are times it’s been a healthier democracy. Backsliding is real. And scholars who study autocratic behavior say they see it happening every day, coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, so right now, the last week or so, we’ve seen it again, very clearly, the American press is in a fight to protect its fundamental rights,” Stelter said.
Fox News and other networks protested Trump’s ban by refusing to cover shared press pools.
White House Correspondents’ Association President Jacqui Heinrich, who also serves as a senior White House correspondent for Fox News, previously blasted the ban and urged Trump to end it.
“The implications extend beyond these organizations: a standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future,” Heinrich wrote.
The president announced last week that he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, accusing all three outlets of publishing “fake news” about him and his administration.
On Saturday, reporters from all three news organizations revealed that their credentials no longer worked and that they had been denied access to the White House grounds.
A judge shot down Trump’s ban in an order issued early Thursday morning. However, reporters said in an emergency petition that they still had no access to the White House that morning.
Around noon, all three outlets reported that their journalists had regained access.
The White House claimed in its own filing that reporters had regained access in the 9 a.m. hour.
It is not yet known what accounted for the hours-long delay.
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