Brian Stelter Credits Fox News for Being ‘A Real Ally’ to CNN and MS NOW Amid Trump Ban Chaos

CNN’s Brian Stelter credited Fox News for being a “real ally” to his network and MS NOW while they have dealt with the chaos surrounding President Donald Trump’s White House ban.

Stelter joined Dana Bash on Inside Politics on Thursday, shortly after CNN, MS NOW, and Politico all reported they had regained access to the White House after initially being turned away that morning. Hours earlier, a judge had rejected the president’s media ban.

“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 the situation is about the “free press writ large.”

Stelter singled out Fox News as an “ally” in the fight, noting the network knows fighting for press freedoms goes far beyond who is currently president.

“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.

Stelter added:

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.

Fox News and other networks protested Trump’s ban by refusing to cover shared press pools. White House Correspondents’ Association President Jacqui Heinrich, who is also a senior White House correspondent for Fox, also 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,” she wrote.

The president announced last week that he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, accusing all three of publishing “fake news” about him and his administration.

On Saturday, reporters from all three outlets revealed their credentials no longer worked, and they were denied access to the White House grounds.

A judge shot down Trump’s ban in an early Thursday morning order, but reporters said in an emergency petition that they still had no access in the morning. Around noon, all three outlets reported that journalists had regained access.

The White House claimed in their 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.

Watch above via CNN.

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