Last week, Mickey Kaus quit The Daily Caller after roughly four years with the news organization. The conservative blogger gave his resignation after the site's co-founder and editor-in-chief, Tucker Carlson, pulled a piece critical of Fox News, where Carlson also serves as a contributor and weekend host.
"We can't trash Fox on the site," Carlson allegedly told Kaus. "I work there."
Kaus joined CNN's "Reliable Sources" on Sunday to elaborate on his grievances with The Daily Caller, and to reiterate his assertion that those on the right are "scared of Fox."
Host Brian Stelter wanted to know if Kaus thought it was even possible for Carlson to both work at Fox News and run a credible news site at the same time.
"Well, he can run a website if he wants. He can run a website saying that Roger Ailes is the most handsome man in the world," Kaus said. "But at some point it stops being journalism."
Kaus also maintained that conservative writers and pundits are afraid to criticize the right-leaning news channel because it may limit the possibility for career advancement.
"Fox is basically the only means, or the main means, the dominate means, of upward mobility for a whole bunch of pundits and writers and want-to-be pundits," he said. "Even if you don't have a show on Fox, like Tucker does, you want to have a show on Fox."
"There are a bunch of competing liberal outlets, but Fox has a monopoly," Kaus continued. "And there's a huge opening for a competitor to Fox on the right that is righter than Fox, because Fox does wuss out on a bunch of issues; immigration is the most obvious one."
The segment Sunday sparked criticism of its own, however. Later that day, Mediaite's Joe Concha wrote a column blasting Stelter and his "non-stop Fox bashing," claiming that "Reliable Sources" had aired segments critical of the cable news channel in eight of its last 10 shows and become "a mix of Olbermann’s old Worst Persons segment and The Daily Show in terms of consistent focus on Fox News."
What came next was a series of mildly contentious tweets between Stelter and Concha, with the CNN host rejecting the idea that "Reliable Sources" had been piling on Fox News.
"I think every media reporter can agree that 'covering' news about a network is not the same as 'bashing' that network," he wrote.
H/T Mediaite