Brian Stelter is returning to CNN, just in time for the presidential debate

Brian Stelter is returning to CNN as the network’s chief media analyst two years after he was fired and will resume writing the “Inside Sources” newsletter that he founded in 2015.
Stelter, a journalist known for his criticism of Fox News, announced his new job Wednesday, saying that in addition to being the lead author of “Inside Sources,” he will appear on air as a media analyst and develop digital content. He will not resume his old Sunday morning TV show, however. The new job “will be different” from his previous work at CNN, he said, “because I am different.”
In the past two years, Stelter, 39, has been a stay-at-home dad for his two children, ages 7 and 5, in addition to working as a freelancer, writing a book and hosting the “Inside the Hive” podcast for Vanity Fair, which he said he will continue to the end of the year.
“I always scoffed at people who said “getting fired was the best thing that’s ever happened to me” — until, well, it happened to me. After 20+ years as a news junkie, I changed my habits and tuned out for a bit,” Stelter wrote in the Reliable Sources newsletter when making the announcement.
“I also changed my vantage point, moving from Manhattan to a horse farm near one of Donald Trump’s golf clubs. I experienced the news more like an everyday consumer, and in doing so, I learned a whole lot about the attention economy and the information ecosystem. I’m looking forward to sharing what I learned with you,” he wrote.
Per The New York Times, Stelter left CNN during a period of change in which then-CEO Chris Licht was purging the network of “voices he perceived as too liberal.”
“Mr. Stelter was among the prominent network hosts who audience research showed were most closely associated with having a liberal tint,” Benjamin Mullin wrote for the Times.
The next year, however, Licht was ousted and replaced by Mark Thompson who this week called Stelter “one of the best global experts in media commentary.”
Fox News was not as complimentary in its report on Stelter’s return, saying, “As host of ‘Reliable Sources,’ Stelter hyped Russiagate, fawned over Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus response, and in Oct. 2020 called the Hunter Biden laptop story a ‘manufactured scandal’ peddled by the ‘right-wing media machine’.”
Stelter’s books include “Network of Lies” and “Hoax,” which both concern Fox News and Trump.