‘Give Me A Break!’ Brian Stelter Blasts Laura Ingraham For Whining About Shutdown ‘Sob Stories’

CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter and his CNN panel took some pointed shots at Fox News host Laura Ingraham for complaining about media covering the real-life impact of the ongoing government shutdown, stating that it was “pretty insensitive” and “ridiculous.”

Late last week, when hundreds of thousands of federal government workers were preparing to not get paid due to the weeks-long shutdown, Ingraham told her audience that media covering “sob stories” of federal employees who hadn’t yet “missed a paycheck” was nothing more than “emotional manipulation” and “pure propaganda.”

“Give me a break, Laura,” Stelter exclaimed on Sunday’s broadcast of Reliable Sources. “There are obviously many real-world effects of the shutdown affecting many Americans. We can show a scroll from CNN.com — 77 different real-world effects listed on CNN.com.”

The CNN host then asked panelist Indira Lakshmanan to weigh in on a “right-wing critic saying these are just sob stories.”

“It’s pretty insensitive and also lacking in knowledge on her part,” the Pulitzer Center executive editor noted. “I don’t know what she’s talking about saying the people haven’t missed a paycheck.”

After Stelter clarified that Ingraham said this on Thursday when many workers hadn’t technically missed a paycheck yet, adding that the Fox star obviously knew that they would be the following day, Lakshmanan stated that her criticism was “ridiculous.”

“The issue and I think the media has done a really good job on this, at least the national news media has, I think, covered not only real-world stories because these are human stories, we have to talk about the 800,000 federal workers who are working without pay or not working at all,” she continued. “It’s not a vacation that they want to be on.”

Watch the clip above, via CNN.