Greta Van Susteren and Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski engaged in an unusual public argument on Tuesday over when it’s appropriate for a cable news personality to call out a competitor.
Their Twitter debate was triggered by comments about Fox News made by Brzezinski’s Morning Joe co-host and husband Joe Scarborough earlier in the morning. Without naming names, Scarborough chided Sean Hannity for making discredited claims about Joe Biden and the whistleblower.
“News orgs and hosts need to stop talking about competitors as each news org has so many skeletons in their closets…They should focus on their own jobs and stop watching each other,” Van Susteren wrote on Twitter, linking to a Mediaite story on Scarborough’s comments.
That irked Brzezinski, who responded to Van Susteren, “Then please stop watching us. What a disturbing tweet. This is about corruption in the Presidency and the hosts that promulgate the President’s lies. A shame not to recognize the importance of this moment.”
The argument continued, as Van Susteren responded, “You can do better – I know it. Stop watching your competitors and your competitors need to stop watching you and doing the same back at you. The inter cable fighting is taking eye off ball to scrutinize government/politicians which is critical.”
Brzezinski replied, “Actually the truth matters. It may not to you. There are those using their platforms to promulgate the President’s lies. You know that. We will recognize it and condemn it when it happens. You may not care about the truth. We do.”
Van Susteren responded, “Do you really believe – even for one second – that I don’t care about the truth?”
Van Susteren, a former CNN, Fox News and MSNBC host, now anchors Gray TV’s Full Court Press and the Voice of America series Plugged In. Throughout the morning, she continued to make her argument in response to others on Twitter, writing, “There are more than 300 million in USA…a small percentage has cable and watches any of the 3 cable networks..yes, it is important to sometimes call out a competitor who gets it wrong but it seems to me that we are at the point where there is too much time at expense of news.”
She acknowledged that Rupert Murdoch, the co-chairman of Fox Corp., and Andy Lack, the chairman of NBC News and MSNBC, are fans of hers, but “I was always proud of my staff and my work at Fox (CNN and MSNBC) – we did credible and fair work.”
She wrote, “We always could (and should) do better searching for facts and provoking robust debate for American people so that they can reach their own opinions…those in the media who think they are so smart and know what to do should run for office and not sit on sidelines.”
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