Washington Free Beacon reporter Elizabeth Harrington criticized the news media Thursday for focusing on gossip to the exclusion of important issues.
Fox News host Neil Cavuto chided major news networks for failing to cover important stories, such as the record high in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Harrington agreed. Harrington pointed to how reporters at the White House press briefing earlier in the day had focused on former White House adviser Steve Bannon and his connection to Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
"[The White House press briefing] is always a variation of the same question asked over and over and over again," Harrington said. "Today we had 19 questions asked about Steve Bannon and this book. Zero questions about the Dow. Zero questions about jobs seeing the lowest layoffs since 1990."
"You have other things going on, like the administration opening up almost all offshore waters to drilling. You have a new proposed regulation that’s going to open up free-market options in healthcare," she added. "You have all of these things happening and yet no questions about it because the media is very shallow, and they latch onto the most petty gossip story of the day."
Harrington said Cavuto and some of his colleagues cover important stories but too many cable news hosts go to the same stories again and again.
"It's either this petty new gossip that comes out or it's Russia, Russia, Russia. A year of this," she said. "They don't talk about anything else when, of course, you can be critical about anything the administration is doing. There's other news going on."
She also said anti-Trump bias affects how some networks report the news.
"I think you can see with the tax cuts, the effect on the market, there’s a lot of positive things going on, but Trump is never going to get a fair shake from the other news networks," she said.