The hostilities between the Libya correspondents for Fox News and CNN continue to play out in the media. Responding to Monday’s fusillade by CNN’s foreign correspondent Nic Robertson, Fox News reporter Steve Harrigan questioned his rival’s manhood in an interview with Huffington Post.
“He puts on his blue blazer and gets on the government bus, and then pats himself on the back and calls that news?” Harrigan says. “Bullshit.”
The feud started Monday when Fox reported that CNN and other Fox competitors were lured into a propaganda mission by Libyan officials, and used as human shields against a British missile attack. Fox stands by their scoop that the reporters were used as shields, but has since acknowledged that one of their own employees was on the trip as well. But before they issued the correction, CNN’s man on the ground in Libya, Nic Robertson, took issue with Fox and his colleague Harrigan as well.
Harrigan counterpunched.
“This is the first time I’ve been attacked,” Harrigan said. “[Robertson is] in the same hotel as me. A man could come down and say, ‘What’s up?’ But instead he’s saying I’m lazy, that I’m a liar and that I’m as bad as Gaddafi.”
Harrigan responded to the laziness charge by noting that he’s required to be on the air more frequently than his colleagues.
“I can stand outside my balcony and report what I see,” he said. “I can talk to people about what they see … but for someone to say I’m lazy who doesn’t know me, who’s not in our working condition, who doesn’t know our schedule … this guy has a screw loose!”
He also called his jousting partner “dull.”
In response to the Huffington Post report, CNN said, “Fox News has reported and is continuing to report without an accurate and respectful grasp of the conditions for all the reporters on the ground. We have no further comment on this.”
