Appearing as a guest on Sunday's Reliable Sources, as CNN political commentator Carl Bernstein exonerated longtime parts of the dominant media like the New York Times, the Washington Post and his own CNN of being biased sources, he accused Fox News of being biased and blamed consumers of news for wanting to see "information to reinforce what they already believe."
After CNN host Brian Stelter asked about the issue of uncertainty about whether to believe online news stories, Bernstein began by defending left-leaning dominant media:
I think we still have an awful lot of great reporting. You see it particularly in old mainstream news -- the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. This particular network, I think, although I've been very critical of some of the things we do in terms of devoting too much airtime to one candidate or another. I think that we are straight in terms of how we present the news and it's unbiased.
He then took aim at Fox News as he added:
I think there's a much bigger problem, and that is the people who are watching and reading us who are not looking for the best obtainable version of the truth who are not interested in unbiased reporting, rather who are looking for information to reinforce what they already believe, their political beliefs, their religious beliefs, their ideological beliefs.
It's key to the success of Fox News that no longer do we have a culture interested in the best obtainable version of the truth that we once had in this country. So I think the problem is less the media than it is really a combination of media and our citizenry.
