Rival presidential nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton aren’t the only public personalities throwing pot shots at each other during this election. News media pundits who regularly report on said shots are doing a lot of the shooting themselves, as Fox News personality Sean Hannity proved Tuesday during a phone interview with his own network’s morning show, Fox & Friends. The subject? CNN’s Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter, who took issue with Hannity’s recent repeated references to conspiracy theories about Clinton’s alleged health issues on Sunday.
Hannity was none too pleased with Stelter’s coverage and criticism. Hence why he devoted a chunk of Tuesday’s interview to explaining his CNN rival and the mainstream media’s incessant attempts to discredit him and the Republican nominee:
“The media is so in the tank, so on board for Hillary, they’re so abusively biased. I literally watched this show on CNN over the weekend, and you’ve got this little pipsqueak named Brian Stelter. He allowed this arrogant professor from the Kennedy School of Journalism to talk about Trump being a demagogue. And demagogues like Trump become dictators. That’s the type of coverage that CNN offers in this presidential race as they literally kiss Hillary Clinton’s ass and Obama’s ass every day.”
So what was it that set Hannity off? Well, he obviously didn’t like Stelter’s guest, John Huey — the so-called “arrogant professor” — who served as editor-in-chief of Time magazine from 2006 to 2012, and was once a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy in 2013. What’s more, he and the Reliable Sources host have been butting heads for quite some time — both on Twitter and on the air. For example, here’s Stelter’s segment from the show Hannity “literally watched” on Sunday:
Sean Hannity’s TV segments about Hillary Clinton’s health have been “reckless,” @brianstelter says https://t.co/Jr735vK5Ta
— Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) August 16, 2016
Hannity hasn’t said anything about his comments since making them. Stelter, however, reiterated the main thrust of his bit about Hannity’s promotion of conspiracy theories in the hopes of moving behind the commentator’s “pipsqueak” jab.
I wish Hannity had addressed my actual point: that he should help his audience instead of misinforming them https://t.co/Gpih8N7ke5
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 16, 2016
(Via Politico)