A college freshman is being hailed as a hero for calling out CNN while asking Brian Stelter a question pertaining to disinformation. This took place at the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.
WATCH what he says to Brian Stelter during the video:
Here’s what the young man, who said his name was Chris Phillips, asked the CNN host, essentially calling out CNN and ruining Brian Stelter:
“My question is for Mr. Stelter, you’ve all spoken extensively about Fox News being a purveyor of disinformation but CNN is right up there with them. They pushed the Russian collusion hoax, they pushed the Jussie Smollett hoax, they smeared Justice Kavanaugh as a racist, and they also smeared Nick Sandmann as a white supremacist, and yes, they dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop affair as pure Russian disinformation.
“With mainstream corporate journalists becoming little more than apologists and cheerleaders for the regime is it time to finally declare the canon of journalistic ethics is dead or no longer operative? All the mistakes of mainstream media and CNN, in particular, seem to magically all go in one direction, are we expected to believe that this all sort of random coincidence, or is there something else behind it?”
Stelter then saidL “too bad, it’s time for lunch” but then elaborated on his answer and didn’t really answer the question at all, just began talking about something else instead of admitting that CNN had also pushed disinformation.
Stelter said: “I think my honest answer to you, and I’ll come over and talk in more detail after this, is that I think you’re describing a different channel than the one that I watch. But I understand that that is a popular right-wing narrative about CNN.
“We talk about shared reality and Democracy all these networks and all these channels have to defend Democracy. And when they screw up, admit it.
“We don’t talk about it enough though, we don’t share that reality about how that happens. And with regards to the regime, I think you mean President Biden, well, the last time I spoke with a Biden aide, we yelled with each other.
“So that’s the reality of the news business, the people don’t see, the people don’t hear, they imagine it’s a situation that it simply is not, but I think your question speaks to the failure of journalism to show our work and show the reality of how our profession operates. We have a lot of work to do, I think.”
It appears as though Brian Stelter did not really answer the young man’s question at all, but instead just started babbling about the industry.