Brian Stelter Delivers Scathing Message to CNN Critics: 'We're Not Going Anywhere'

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CNN’s Brian Stelter warned his audience Sunday that he was, “going to go a little bit rogue,” during the last comments of his show Reliable Sources, where he passionately denounced critics of CNN its former chief Jeff Zucker.

Zucker resigned Wednesday, announcing his departure in an email to staff that shocked the network to its core. This monumental resignation rippled across the CNN, with anchors expressing their surprise and grief across the network and social media.

Stelter displayed this disturbance in his commentary while highlighting that, “CNN was not built by just one man, not by only Ted Turner and it was not led only by Jeff Zucker.”

“CNN is so much bigger than any single individual. It is about teams and teams of people, thousands of individuals who make up CNN,” Stelter continued, “This place is not perfect. It will never be perfect.”

“We will always have flaws, we will always screw up, we will always have to run corrections,” Stelter said, acknowledging many concerns brought forth about CNN in recent years.

“But the people who say we’re lacking journalism, that we’ve become an all-talk channel, that we’ve run off and we’re all opinions all the time, that Jeff Zucker led us astray, those people aren’t watching CNN,” argued Stelter passionately — despite the fact that nine of CNN’s 18 hours of live programming per day, including all of its primetime lineup, consists of programs which mostly feature opinion content.

The anchor continued to rebuke critics saying, “They’re watching complaints about CNN on other channels that don’t know what they’re talking about. That’s the truth.”

“On the day Jeff Zucker resigned, CNN published more than 215 stories on the website, nearly 90 original vids. That’s a hell of a lot of news. It’s a hell of a lot of journalism,” pressed Stelter.

“CNN is the executives and it’s the interns and everybody in between who keeps this place running 24/7,” he added, “so when something horrible happens in the world, or when something wonderful happens in the world, you know where to turn.”

“That’s what CNN is,” stated Stelter, staring strongly into the camera.

“We lost our leader this week. We’re not going anywhere,” he said with a smile.

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