Media columnist Michael Wolff blasted CNN’s Brian Stelter in a face-to-face interview on Sunday, telling the media correspondent that his weekly on-air diatribes about Donald Trump’s interactions with the press make him “quite a ridiculous figure.”
Wolff was invited on Stelter’s show, “Reliable Sources,” to discuss his recent Newsweek article entitled “Why the media keeps losing to Donald Trump.”
Wolff, who also writes for USA Today and The Hollywood Reporter, wrote in the piece:
The media strategy is to show Trump to be an inept and craven sociopath. The Trump strategy is to show that media people are hopeless prigs out of touch with the nation (e.g., CNN’s media correspondent, Brian Stelter, who turns to the camera every Sunday morning and delivers a pious sermon about Trump’s perfidiousness) and nursing personal grudges.
Stelter asked Wolff about the critique, though he may now regret doing so.
“Do you feel that my style is wrong, or my substance is wrong, trying to fact-check the president?” asked Stelter.
Wolff gave a surprisingly brutal response.
“I mean this with truly no disrespect, I think you can border on being sort of quite a ridiculous figure,” he said.
“It’s not a good look to repeatedly and self-righteously defend your own self interest. The media should not be the story. Every week in this religious sense, you make it the story. We are not the story,” Wolff continued.
“You don’t think there’s room for one hour a week on CNN for this?” asked Stelter.
“Listen, I love your show, I just wish you wouldn’t turn to the camera and lecture America about the virtue of the media,” said Wolff. “The media will be fine.”
“The media does not need defending by the media, certainly.”
Wolff also took a shot at The New York Times and The New Yorker.
“So far the media is…I mean The New York Times front page looks like it’s 1938 in Germany everyday. The New Yorker has left all of its standards behind and now has become an opinion vehicle, constantly,” he argued.
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