On Sunday’s latest episode of CNN’s delightfully named “Reliable Sources,” Brian Stelter did what Brian Stelter does best: whine about Fox News.
Earlier in March, mourning the loss of Donald Trump — and the four years of stellar reporting he provided objective outlets like CNN — Stelter dedicated an entire segment to attempting to shoe-horn Tucker Carlson into Donald Trump’s shoes, labeling the Fox News star as “the new Donald Trump.”
Tucker Carlson is the new Donald Trump. Tucker has taken Trump's place as a right-wing leader, an outrage generator, a fire-starter… pic.twitter.com/y8OzdAlSlN
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 14, 2021
“Tucker has taken Trump’s place as a right-wing leader, as an outrage generator, as a fire-starter, and it’s all happening on Fox, just like Trump’s campaign did,” said Stelter.
This past weekend, Stelter continued his one-man campaign against Fox News by arguing that high-profile figures at the conservative outlet should be mimicking their counterparts on other networks by sharing “vaccine selfies” or being vaccinated while on-air.
“It’s really important to see all these TV anchors, personalities, showing themselves getting the shot,” Stelter began. “We’ve seen a lot of vaccine selfies from lots of folks at lots of different networks. It’s been really inspiring to see.”
“So, I say all of that to make the following point: Where are Tucker and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham? Where is Ainsley Earhardt and Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade? Where are the biggest stars on Fox getting vaccinated?” he asked his guest, the equally objective Matt Gertz from Media Matters.
Unsurprisingly, Gertz’s response was that Fox “has a really unique responsibility,” and that these figures were abhorrent for “raising questions about [the vaccine’s] effectiveness, raising questions about whether it is dangerous.”
Throughout this segment, one chyron stood out above the rest as a perfect metaphor for Stelter as a “journalist” as he wages war against his enemies on the Right: “Fox’s Biggest Stars Have Not Shared Vaccine Selfies.”
Setting aside that CNN happily gave Democratic politicians a platform to question the safety and efficacy of these same vaccines when Donald Trump was in the White House, Stelter’s ongoing obsession with keeping Fox News “relevant” in the eyes of his audience has reached new desperate lows.
It’s not that the “checks and balances” goal of his show isn’t necessarily worthwhile — after all, there are conservative outlets who work to keep CNN “honest.” However, what is quite telling is the embarrassing pettiness of Stelter’s hunger to remain relevant as he sincerely leans into the camera and tries to dramatically sew a connection between all that is bad in the world and those over at Fox News … many of whom are destroying him in the ratings.
To Stelter, the chyron “Fox’s Biggest Stars Have Not Shared Vaccine Selfies” doubtlessly elicits excited gasps of anticipation. To his viewers, whose numbers are unsurprisingly dwindling, such an “announcement” only seems to elicit one response: “So what, Brian?”
A response which is honestly appropriate for the vast majority of his reporting.
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.