Harvard Taps Journalism ‘Expert’ Brian Stelter for Teaching Gig
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Brian Stelter, the longtime media critic fired by CNN last month, has been selected by Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy to be its Fall 2022 Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow, the Ivy League university announced in a press release on Monday.
“Brian Stelter is a nationally recognized media reporter and expert on the state of journalism and its wide-reaching implications for society and governance,” asserted Harvard in its press release. His job will be to “convene a series of discussions about threats to democracy and the range of potential responses from the news media.”
Stelter was let go by CNN after its new chairman and CEO, Chris Licht, took the reins from Jeff Zucker, who encouraged Stelter to make criticism of right-wing media the focus of his show, Reliable Sources. Licht was reportedly frustrated with Stelter’s progressive bias and the reputational damage he was doing to the network, and told staffers that “more changes” were coming after Stelter’s exit was announced.
Among Stelter’s missteps was his calling the Hunter Biden laptop story a “manufactured scandal” and “classic example of the right-wing media machine” in October 2020. He finally admitted on-air last month, just before his firing, that “this is not just a right-wing media story. This is a real problem for the Bidens.”
In addition to relentlessly critiquing non-mainstream outlets, Stelter frequently provided cover for ethics violations and stories botched by the mainstream media, including his own network.
After it was revealed that then-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo — who had been allowed to obsequiously interview his brother, New York Andrew Cuomo, during the Covid-19 pandemic — had acted as an advisor to his brother after allegations of sexual abuser were leveled against him, Stelter defended both Cuomo and the network, saying “I don’t think, if we open up the journalism ethics book, there’s no page for this. It’s the craziest set of circumstances you can imagine.”
