Mollie Hemingway: Why isn't the media allowed to notice Joe Biden's verbal struggles?
Brian Kilmeade and Mollie Hemingway discusses Joe Biden's struggles to communicate on the campaign trail amid the coronavirus pandemic
The mainstream media largely abandoned CBS News senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge last week when she was attacked by Joe Biden's campaign flack – but critics say things would have gone differently had her reporting fit the liberal “groupthink” narrative.
Herridge broke Wednesday’s bombshell that top Obama administration officials -- including then-Vice President Biden -- purportedly requested to "unmask" the identity of the former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Biden's rapid response director Andrew Bates quickly called her a “partisan, right-wing hack” in a now-deleted tweet.
CNN DOWNPLAYS MICHAEL FLYNN 'UNMASKING' BOMBSHELL AFTER YEARS OF WALL-TO-WALL RUSSIA-TRUMP COVERAGE
The liberal Daily Beast then published a story claiming Herridge -- a former longtime Fox News reporter -- was vexing both Democrats on Capitol Hill and anonymous CBS colleagues for what they claimed was favorable coverage to Republicans. Jewish News Syndicate editor-in-chief Jonathan S. Tobin said Herridge was “subjected to abuse by Joe Biden’s campaign mouthpiece and backstabbed by her colleagues” while the majority of outspoken mainstream reporters remained silent.
The mainstream media largely abandoned CBS correspondent Catherine Herridge after a Joe Biden campaign staffer called her a “partisan, right-wing hack.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper and Bloomberg’s Eli Lake were the only reporters from mainstream news organizations to give public defenses of Herridge, who joined CBS last year after spending 23 years at Fox News.
“To attack her as partisan gets it backwards. Not reporting on the new documents on the Flynn case betrays partisanship,” Lake wrote.
CNN'S BRIAN STELTER'S APPARENT HESITANCE TO COVER TARA READE'S BIDEN ACCUSATIONS RAISES EYEBROWS
CNN’s Brian Stelter completely ignored the Biden campaign’s attack on Herridge during Sunday’s edition of his “Reliable Sources” show that claims to cover the “story behind the story” in the journalism world. In fact, when he opened the episode by condemning Trump’s ongoing “crusade against reporters.” Stelter admittedly repeated a three-year-old rant that Trump’s anti-press rhetoric is “poison” that must be taken seriously.
“Calling news outlets the ‘enemy of the people’ is a verbal form of poison,” Stelter said.
“If you’ve heard that before, it’s because every word I just said is three years old…sometimes the biggest news is what hasn’t changed,” Stelter told viewers to reiterate that he’s been on a mission to protect journalists from Trump since 2018.
But CNN’s in-house media critic didn’t support Herridge after Biden’s staffer sent--then deleted--his "right-wing hack” attack.
GOV. ANDREW CUOMO GETS A PASS FROM CNN ON NURSING HOME POLICY CONTROVERSY
Media Research Center director of media analysis Tim Graham noticed Stelter’s omission.
“Stelter never mentioned liberal attacks on CBS reporter Catherine Herridge, because there is no ‘vicious, vicious cycle’ when Fox reporters or ex-Fox reporters get attacked,” Graham wrote.
While perhaps the most egregious, Stelter wasn’t alone in failing to stand up for Herridge.
Tobin called out the lack of support that Herridge received in a New York Post column titled, “Media knives out for Catherine Herridge — for reporting ObamaGate straight.” He noted that her career has been “marked by admirable objectivity” but jealousy and her association with Fox News "motivated her mainstream colleagues to blackball her" when attacked by the Biden staffer.
VIDEO HIGHLIGHTING CNN HOST BRIAN STELTER'S 'OBSESSION' WITH RUSSIA INVESTIGATION GOES VIRAL
“The Biden campaign’s attacks on Herridge, and the sniping at her from colleagues, also illustrated the appalling hypocrisy of most of the Washington press corps,” Tobin wrote. “Whenever Trump talks back to relentlessly hostile reporters at news briefings, they denounce him for supposedly trying to destroy press freedom.”
DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall agreed with Tobin and said it “tells us a lot about the journalism establishment” that it went silent when the Biden camp attacked Herridge over “on-target reports” about the Flynn unmasking.
“If Herridge were a ‘partisan right-wing hack,’ as she was called by a Biden backer, she most certainly wouldn't have been hired by CBS, of all places,” McCall told Fox News.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP
“In recent weeks, establishment journalists have jumped to the defense of fellow reporters such as Weija Jiang, Jim Acosta and Yamiche Alcindor, when they were criticized by Trump,” McCall added. “The press establishment defends these people as ‘just doing their jobs.’ Well, so is Herridge, but she is not entrenched in the same groupthink as most of the DC reporters and they don't like it.”
CBS News defended Herridge in a statement originally provided to the Daily Beast.
“Catherine is a deeply sourced reporter who has worked the national-security beat for two decades and just last week secured one of the biggest newsmaker interviews with Attorney General William Barr, which was cited by national and international outlets,” a CBS News spokesperson said. “This is the kind of aggressive reporting we applaud at CBS News.”
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox