Is Fox News part of the mainstream media? It depends.

A joint news conference in February between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prompted numerous complaints from big-time media outlets. They’d been shut out of the Q&A session in favor of news outlets that they considered friendly to the interests of the Trump White House.

In a discussion about the kerfuffle, Fox News host Shannon Bream asked colleague Howard Kurtz whether such outlets had fretted in the past, when Fox News had been iced out. “Nobody much cared about that in the mainstream media,” responded Kurtz. “I guess that Fox News is part of the mainstream media, but….” I guess? Whoa for a moment here. This is Howard Kurtz, Fox News media critic and a longtime observer of the national media scene. And he isn’t 100 percent sure whether his employer is part of the club known as the mainstream media?