Watch: In Which Fox News' Bret Baier Explains Journalism 101 to CNN's Don Lemon

You don’t often see longtime Fox News “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier wade into the ongoing squabbles between his network’s opinion show hosts and pretty much everyone at CNN (reporters and opinionators alike – not that there’s much difference). But on Sunday he did just that after being asked by “Media Buzz” journalism guru Howard Kurtz about recent comments made by CNN’s Don Lemon about how maybe Fox News reporters should get kicked out of the White House press briefing room.

Kurtz was referencing a segment between Lemon and CNN’s resident media hall monitor Brian Stelter in which Lemon made out the recently-revealed texts from some popular Fox News opinion hosts to then-Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on the day of the Capitol riot into something they’re not. He then went on to “ask” Stelter and CNN “conservative voice” (LOL) S.E. Cupp why Fox continues to be called on in the briefing room:

“Why? Why does Jen Psaki even continue to call in Fox in the briefing room? They very — they’ve been very courteous and I should say, you know, kind. Because if your network is promoting B.S. and lies about what is actually happening in the country, and helping to inspire and inside an insurrection, why — why should they even be able to take part in a legitimate press briefing, and legitimate journalism?

As I explained at length here, not only was Don Lemon wrong about the context of the Fox News texts, but he is the last person – and I do mean the last person – who should be lecturing anyone else on journalistic standards considering his disturbing track record of not only encouraging/excusing rioters when it fits his leftist political agenda, but also because he’s a compliant little lapdog for Democrats and one who also tips off hate crime hoaxsters while at the same time unethically reporting on stories involving those hoaxsters.

Baier’s take was, of course, more measured and diplomatic than mine, but his overall point (though obviously self-serving to a certain extent) was that it was ridiculous for CNN to continue to wage the kind of war they have on Fox News because there is obviously a difference between the opinion side and the news side, which Baier correctly pointed out was something you see at most major media organizations (although in CNN’s case you often can’t distinguish between the two – by design).

Watch below as Baier calmly calls out CNN’s games, pointing to the stellar reporting from their national correspondents like Bill Melugin (who has been a beast documenting the Biden border crisis), and also reminds critics that even though they have a rivalry that Fox News has in the past defended CNN’s right to have a seat in the White House briefing room:

Over the weekend, @SpecialReport anchor @BretBaier defended Fox News and their hard news reporters from the “just silly” criticism they receive from CNN constantly. “We’ve been fighting that battle a long time. But just like a paper, there’s a news side and an opinion side.” pic.twitter.com/5PjyAz29bb

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) December 20, 2021

The last time I remember Baier speaking out to this extent about the ongoing PR war between Fox News and CNN was a year ago, when he mic dropped Stelter’s hall monitor-in-training Oliver Darcy on Twitter while he (Baier) was in the middle of a broadcast, explaining to Darcy just as he did in his back and forth with Kurtz that there is a difference between the opinion and journalism sides.

That’s something that often gets overlooked in this debate – the fact that most often the “issues” Fox News’s critics on the left have with them are regarding the opinion side, which then gets conflated into “Fox News bad.”

In reality, what CNN, in particular, is doing here is projection on a massive scale and on so many fronts, because not only are they an unofficial arm of the Democratic party and the Biden administration, but as I said earlier one is hard-pressed on any given day to be able to figure out which media figures on CNN are the opinion people and which ones are supposedly the objective reporters because they all sound the same 99% of the time.

Facts first and all that.