'Journalistic Corruption': Mark Halperin Gloriously Roasts CNN's Brian Stelter Over Tapper Book Coverage

CNN's Jake Tapper has been heavily promoting the book he co-authored on former President Joe Biden's decline on his employer's network. In turn, his colleagues have taken to asking Democrat political figures on their programs what they knew and when they knew it.

As we've reported, some guests, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and powerful House Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) - both of whom co-chaired Biden's doomed reelection campaign - have pretended they were not aware of any issues, saying they weren't around Biden that much to notice that anything was off.

As we also documented, another one who refuses to give an honest answer is Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who is robotically telling reporters who ask him about Biden's cognitive health that "we're just looking forward."

Tapper's colleague, media hall monitor Brian Stelter, has been one of the most prominent cheerleaders of Tapper's book despite his own role alongside Tapper in gaslighting readers and viewers for nearly four years about Biden, including what they called the "cheap fake" videos of Biden ahead of the infamous June 2024 presidential debate.

It was Stelter choosing to fangirl over the book rather than acknowledge the media's politically-motivated, grotesque dereliction in coverage of concerns about Biden's health that was just too much for independent journalist Mark Halperin to tolerate.

In commentary from his most recent podcast, Halperin went off, calling Stelter's actions part of a pattern of "journalistic corruption" in the press:

And then you’ve got at CNN, this guy Brian Stelter, who’s their media reporter, who’s an ally of Jake Tapper, to protect Tapper’s image, to enhance Tapper’s image. He’s got a media newsletter. He’s supposed to cover the media. Guy doesn’t write about the biggest failure in the history of American media. Instead, he writes about how great Tapper’s book is.
And today in his newsletter - guy’s a fan of irony - he writes about how it was so important for Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson to have the truth in their book, the full truth, that they hired the head of The New Yorker’s fact-checking department to fact-check their book.
Okay, again, the job of a media reporter, I would think, is not to protect and promote his colleague. And this is no innocent here, Brian Stelter. In addition to promoting and protecting Jake Tapper, Brian Stelter has been, over the course of the entire Biden presidency, one of the biggest critics of those on the right and those few people like me in the independent media who have tried to hold Joe Biden accountable.

Halperin went on to recall the lengths Stelter went to in an effort to try and discredit Biden's critics at the time. Later, he talked about how Stelter and other media figures were "missing the moment" in their fawning coverage of the book rather than engaging in introspection:

He’s accused us of, you know, being propagandists, of celebrating cheap fakes and deep fakes. I don’t understand someone whose job it is to hold the media accountable, to not hold not just his own network but every news organization in the country, who now, it’s clear, participated in a cover-up, some because of threats, some because of a desire to help Joe Biden win. Massive cover-up.
And instead of pointing out the flaws of the book, he cites the favorable reviews the book has gotten from news organizations like the Washington Post and the New York Times, who participated in the cover-up and whose failure was manifest. He cites the favorable reviews, and then the Twitter account for the book tweets out Brian Stelter’s citations. It’s nothing short of journalistic corruption. And it’s missing the moment.

Watch:

.@MarkHalperin: "You've got at CNN this guy Brian Stelter, who's their media reporter, who's an ally of Jake Tapper, to protect Jake Tapper's image... It's nothing short of journalistic corruption, and it's missing the moment..."

Watch and download:https://t.co/r9TLzXCunB pic.twitter.com/zbA1XzouyK
— Next Up with Mark Halperin (@NextUpHalperin) May 15, 2025

Despite being in on the cover-up himself, Tapper has repeatedly (and laughably) alleged that the media didn't know enough about the issue to do credible reporting on it because the White House and Democrats kept it from them.

It's an infuriating claim considering we've been reliably informed for years now that Tapper is one of the most "in the know" journalists in the Acela media, and also considering that one didn't need to be a member of the media at all to notice what was going on.

In any event, as I said before, though some of the information from the book has been illuminating, the fact that notorious Democrat media apologists like Jake Tapper and Brian Stelter are basking in the spotlight and portraying themselves as heroes while trying to profit off the cover-up they helped perpetrate is nauseating.

While they may think this book will help them wipe some of the tarnish off of the media's heavily stained image, here's a newsflash for them: It won't.

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