CNN’s Jim Acosta on Sunday slammed Fox News as “state-supported media” that serves as a mouthpiece for the Trump administration.

Speaking to CNN’s “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter, Mr. Acosta fired back at criticism from Fox News pundits who accused him of attention-seeking for regularly shouting questions at President Trump during inopportune moments. Mr. Acosta said conservatives pick on him because they no longer have Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

“The president and Fox News, they don’t have Barack Obama around anymore,” Mr. Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, said. “They don’t have Hillary Clinton. Although they go after her a lot. They replaced Obama and Hillary. They need somebody to attack. I think that we’ve sort of filled that role.

“There are folks on the conservative side, I refer to them affectionately as the ‘MAGAphone.’ They by and large just echo what the president wants to hear and what he wants to say. We see that a lot happening over on Fox News,” he added.

Mr. Acosta made headlines last week after he shouted at the president asking if he would stop labeling the media the “enemy of the people” in light of the Capital Gazette newspaper shooting. Conservative commentators have blasted the tactic as grandstanding.

“Listen, if they want to send me to hell, I’ll still be shouting at the devil,” Mr. Acosta said Sunday. “We have a job to do. I’ve said this times before and I’ll say it again. They can kick us out of the briefing room, they can kick us out of the White House. We’re still going to do our jobs. And my attitude is that we fill a necessary role in our democracy. The rest of the world is watching us.”

Mr. Acosta warned that the relationship between Fox News and the White House is altering the American idea of a free press.

“We have what I would consider to be a system of state-supported media,” he said. “You have a White House, a president that lends so much support to one individual news network which gives them beneficial coverage, that it has changed the nature of what we view as being our system of delivering the news in this country.”

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