CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter offered rare praise Thursday for Fox News, a longtime rival of his network.
Stelter commended the conservative cable channel for standing with CNN, MS NOW and Politico during their days-long exclusion from the White House under President Donald Trump.
He made the comments on air with Dana Bash after all three outlets reported that they had regained access to the White House earlier Thursday afternoon.
A federal judge had ordered the administration that morning to restore the organizations’ access.
Bash first pointed out that Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS had each declined to participate in the president’s press pool coverage since Monday.
“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.
She emphasized that the dispute extended beyond competition between news organizations. “It’s about the free press writ large,” Bash said.
Stelter then singled out Fox News, the most conservative of the major television networks involved.
CNN reporter Brian Stelter offered rare praise Thursday for longtime rival Fox News after it stood with CNN, MS NOW and Politico during Donald Trump’s press ban
A federal judge ordered the White House to restore the outlets’ access Thursday morning. By noon, all three were back inside the building, prompting Stelter and Dana Bash to respond live on Inside Politics
He said the confrontation had crossed traditional political and partisan boundaries.
“Fox News has been a real ally of CNN and the other major networks this week. And frankly, Dana, I think that’s partly because Fox… it’s thinking about the past and [Barack] Obama.”
During his first term, Obama attempted in 2009 to exclude Major Garrett, then a star correspondent for the cable network, from a multipool interview. The effort failed after ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC jointly objected.
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A statement issued by those same outlets this time said, “No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
Stelter suggested Fox News was also considering “what happens when a Democrat is back in the Oval Office, and whether some Democrat would pull a stunt like this.”
“And then again more broadly, what are we going through in America?” he continued. Stelter described the nearly weeklong exclusion as one of several recent “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 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Both journalists praised the conservative network for showing solidarity in opposition to a Republican president
Fox News chief White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich also criticized Trump’s decision in her role as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association on Saturday.
Her statement came after reporters were turned away from the White House and told that their credentials had been revoked. Trump had announced the ban in a Truth Social post the previous day.
“Today’s action revoking access for journalists from CNN, POLITICO, and MSNOW violates the First Amendment.
“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. She urged the administration “to immediately restore” their access.
Bash also offered a personal thank-you Thursday to Bryan Boughton, Fox’s Washington bureau chief, who chairs the television press pool that effectively brought the coverage suspension to an end and distributed the email announcing that the pool would stop such coverage.
“I personally say thank you to him,” Bash said, describing Boughton’s actions as “a profile in courage and doing what is right.”
