CNN’s Brian Stelter wants you to believe press freedom is sacred.

His network got banned from the White House, and suddenly the principles are flowing.

And what Stelter said about Fox News back in 2021 is going to make your blood boil.

Stelter Praises the Network He Once Tried to Bury

CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter joined anchor Dana Bash on Inside Politics recently, shortly after CNN, MS NOW, and Politico reported they had regained White House access following a brief lockout.

President Trump announced he was banning the three outlets from the White House, accusing them of being “FAKE NEWS!” and saying they were trying “to diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration.”

Reporters from all three outlets — CNN’s Betsy Klein, MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner, and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett — showed up for work and got turned away, their hard-pass credentials deactivated.

A federal judge shot down the ban in an early morning order. The White House claimed reporters had regained access in the 9 a.m. hour, but the three outlets said they still had no access that morning. Around noon, all three reported their journalists were back inside.

Standing in front of the cameras on CNN, Stelter went out of his way to tip his hat to Fox News.

“Fox News has been a real ally of CNN and the other major networks this week,” Stelter said.

He went further, explaining why Fox stood behind its supposed competitors: “And frankly, I think that’s partly because Fox, yeah, it’s thinking about the past and Obama, but it’s also thinking about what happens when a Democrat is back in the Oval Office and whether some Democrat would pull a stunt like this.”

Dana Bash agreed, calling the solidarity from other organizations a sign that Trump’s move might not ever end up successful.

“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.

White House Correspondents’ Association President Jacqui Heinrich, who is also a senior White House correspondent for Fox News, had already called out the ban by the time Stelter went on air.

“Today’s action revoking access for journalists from CNN, POLITICO, and MSNOW violates the First Amendment,” Heinrich said in a statement. “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.”

CNN, MS NOW, and Politico also filed a joint lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing the ban retaliated against them for their coverage in violation of the First Amendment and deprived them of due process under the Fifth Amendment.

The 2021 Tape That Blew Up Stelter’s Credibility

The problem for Stelter is that the internet has a long memory.

Footage resurfaced from March 2021 of Stelter doing a segment on whether President Biden should strip Fox News of its White House press pool access.

Sitting on his CNN perch, Stelter raised the idea unprompted and framed it as a perfectly reasonable policy question to explore.

“There are, you know, questions about Fox, as Fox radicalizes, and as it becomes even more and more of a political tool,” Stelter said in the 2021 clip. “Should it be a part of the White House Press Pool? You know, should it be afforded the privileges that come with news-gathering, even though they do have some ‘news’ reporters at the White House, you’re saying they’re primarily a political tool, so should that be re-assessed?”

His guest, David Zurawik, ran with it. Zurawik said he thought it was “a discussion we need to have.”

And that was Stelter’s idea of journalism in 2021 — floating the removal of a competitor from press pool access because he personally judged that competitor to be insufficiently journalistic. No First Amendment alarm bells. No “this is a free speech test in America.” Just a breezy policy debate about whether a conservative outlet deserved a seat at the table.

But when Trump pulled the same move against CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, Stelter called it “a direct threat to press freedom in the United States.”

“It’s so much bigger than CNN,” Stelter said. “This is a free speech test in America.”

Somewhere between 2021 and today, White House press access transformed in Stelter’s mind from a “privilege” — his own framing when the target was Fox — into an inviolable constitutional right.

What the Double Standard Reveals About the Media Establishment

The selective outrage here deserves to be named clearly.

Stelter spent years as one of the loudest voices lecturing the country about press freedom, media ethics, and the dangers of politicians attacking journalists. His old CNN show existed almost entirely to police how other networks covered the news.

And yet in March 2021, sitting safely inside a Democrat-friendly White House, Stelter casually raised the idea of removing Fox News from the press pool because he didn’t like Fox’s editorial direction. He dressed it up as a question, not a demand. But the implication was clear enough that his guest immediately embraced it as a “discussion we need to have.”

That footage had been sitting in the public record the whole time.

Now consider what Stelter told his audience this week. He praised Fox News for being a “real ally,” credited Fox’s institutional memory of the Obama years as part of its motivation, and suggested Fox was protecting press freedom out of enlightened self-interest.

All of that may even be true as far as it goes. Fox News, to its credit, stood behind its competitors when Trump dropped the ban. Jacqui Heinrich, as the sitting president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, put out a strong statement within hours. The five major television networks — CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News — reportedly held together as the TV pool and waited on confirmation from the White House before airing footage of Trump’s events.

But notice what Stelter never offered in any of his commentary this week: an acknowledgment that he once floated doing to Fox exactly what Trump just did to him.

The broader media establishment spent the Biden years cheering on every conceivable tool of suppression against conservative voices — deplatforming, demonetization, pressure campaigns on advertisers, and yes, gentle chats on cable news about whether Fox News really deserved to be in the press pool. Big Tech censored conservatives throughout the COVID era on questions about lockdowns, school closures, and mandates, and legacy media figures like Stelter either applauded or looked the other way.

So when Stelter shows up now wrapped in the First Amendment, asking the country to be outraged on CNN’s behalf, there are two things worth keeping in mind.

First, Trump’s instinct to push back against outlets that have treated his administration and his voters with open contempt for years is not some unprecedented assault on democracy. Every administration has tensions with the press. The specific legal question of whether pulling credentials violates the First Amendment is a legitimate one for courts to resolve — and a federal judge already weighed in quickly.

Second, and more important: the people now screaming the loudest about press freedom are the same people who spent the better part of a decade building the infrastructure of viewpoint suppression that targeted conservatives. They called it “content moderation.” They called it “harm reduction.” Stelter himself used that exact phrase — “harm reduction” — to describe the idea of removing Fox News from cable lineups entirely, in a 2023 segment with Nicholas Kristof.

The selective outrage lands differently when the receipts are this fresh.

Stelter credited Fox News for understanding that what goes around comes around — that a Democrat in the Oval Office someday might try the same move. That analysis is probably right. But Stelter’s own 2021 segment proves he wasn’t thinking about what goes around when the target was an outlet he didn’t like.

The principle only became a principle when it was CNN’s press passes on the line.

Sources: Mediaite, “Brian Stelter Credits Fox News for Being ‘A Real Ally’ to CNN and MS NOW Amid Trump Ban Chaos”; The Wrap, “Brian Stelter Applauds Fox News as a ‘Real Ally’ Amid CNN White House Ban”; Legal Insurrection, “CNN’s Brian Stelter Seemed Fine With the Idea of Removing FOX News From the WH Press Pool in 2021”; Liberty One News, “CNN’s Stelter Cries Foul Over Trump Press Ban After Pushing the Same Idea Against Fox in 2021”; Mediaite, “WHCA Boss and Senior Fox News Journo Jacqui Heinrich Urges Trump to End Press Ban Immediately”; The Hill, “CNN, MS NOW and Politico to sue over White House ban”; Grabien Media, Stelter 2021 transcript