Steve Bannon ripped into CNN on Thursday, slamming the network just hours after CNN chief Jeff Zucker accused Fox News of being “state-run TV and a “propaganda machine.”
“It galls me that someone like Jeff Zucker can walk in here and say that Fox News is a propaganda channel. You can’t name a more propaganda outlet than CNN,” the former White House adviser said during a heated exchange at the Financial Time Future of News conference in New York City.
“That is a propaganda outfit. Every night it’s, Hate Trump. To come in here and say that another network is propaganda, that is totally absurd,” he said.
“They’re gutless, they’ll never debate the facts,” the ex-Breitbart News chairman added. “That’s why they’re a propaganda outfit, just like the New York Times.”
Earlier in the day, Zucker made headlines after launching a blistering attack on Fox News, which he called a “state-run” news organization comparable to the Russian media service TASS.
“It is really state-run TV. It is a pure propaganda machine and I think does an incredible disservice to this country,” Zucker said. “There are a handful of really good journalists there, but I think they are lost in what is a complete propaganda machine and the idea that it’s a news channel is really not the case at all.”
“TASS has nothing on them,” said Zucker. “I’ll get attacked all night tonight and tomorrow night for saying this but whatever, it’s the truth.”
Reps for Fox News did not immediately respond to request for comment from TheWrap.
Bannon also opined widely in a freewheeling interview with Financial Times Editor Lionel Barber. In addition to defending Fox News, Bannon also said he had no regrets about his role as a primary source in Michael Wolff’s best-seller “Fire and Fury.”
“Hope Hicks and the president authorized that book,” said Bannon. “I haven’t read the book but no, I don’t regret it. It is what it is.”
Bannon also deflected questions about his former employer Cambridge Analytica, and instead savaged Facebook and its leader, Mark Zuckerberg.
“That data is all out there. Facebook takes your stuff for free, they sell it and monetize it for huge margins and then they write algorithms that control your life,” he said. “ His entire business model is taking that data for free and monetizing it and then writing algorithms on a wall and treating you like a hamster in a wheel.”