On CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday, host Brian Stelter who stuck up for Hillary Clinton last weekend did so again. This time he set his sight on the Associated Press for daring to publish a story which exposed how big money donor’s to the Clinton Foundation received special meetings with her while she was Secretary of State. Stelter questioned why they would even publish the story following a six and a half year investigation, “did you feel the pressure to publish SOMETHING even though so many critics have said it didn’t amount to much?”
Stelter sat down with AP’s Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll to discuss the investigation, and he was hostile even before they started speaking. “And there are wider questions about why the AP published the story at all,” Stelter stated in the introduction to the segment, “They had conducted a long investigation; did they just want to show they had done the work, did they just want to show they found something, even if it didn't amount to much?”
Carroll kept her cool and explained that the calendars of public officials, especially for those running for president, needed to be scrutinized. “The question for me is, why has the State Department and the Clinton administration--- I mean the Clinton State Department and beyond fought so hard to keep these calendars from us,” she asked to Stelter. She also informed him it took them over six years, a court battle, and a judge’s ruling to receive only Clinton’s first two years’ worth of calendars.
The CNN host parroted the Clinton campaign arguing that many of the 154 people the AP named would have received meetings with other secretaries of state, not just Clinton. Carroll told Stelter that Clinton didn’t want to be held accountable. “She wouldn’t answer any questions,” she informed her host, “If she could have told us that before we did the story we’d have been glad to include that.”
But Stelter wasn’t having any of it and continued to question AP’s reporting:
But saying they didn’t respond to your requests, does that give you the ability to just go ahead and publish it and mislead people? …
Sometimes a story can leave a misleading impression with people though, even if the story isn't exactly false, right? By focusing so heavy on something you give the impression that there's a fire there, when really there’s only smoke.
AP’s executive editor didn’t back down and defended the work of her reporters. “I don’t think the story was fiery at all,” she countered Stelter, “If you read it, it’s very measured and it spends a lot of time at the very top of the story explaining what we're writing about, what we're not writing about.”
He even took a swipe at Carroll’s age while they were discussing “clumsy” tweets the AP has made in the past. “[Tweets are] probably a problem or a challenge YOU didn't face when you took over the AP years ago,” he sniped, but Carroll took it all in stride.