The program, which aired on Saturday evening, showed footage of an obese man and likened him to the Carlton midfielder.
"It’s a pot shot. I’m a great believer in people in glass houses," Riley said.
"I just think it’s very easy to sit on the outside and be critical of people. I tend to go the other way and look at the positives they bring to the table."
Turning to Sunday’s game, Riley endorsed coach Brett Ratten’s view that records weren’t relevant to the Blues’ current set-up.
If the club loses to Collingwood at the MCG on Sunday, it would be their 15th consecutive defeat, their worst losing streak ever.
"I’ve been here for only five minutes and as Rats (Ratten) keeps saying, it is a new season, new people, new players, new coaches… it doesn’t mean much to me," he said.
"I’ve been here for three games, not 14 or 400. So we’re just starting again with a very young group. We think we’ve made some steps forward but we’re not the whole package yet and that’s our aim. Our aim is to build for the next premiership, a 17th premiership and that’s not easy and doesn’t happen overnight."
Having conceded 23 goals in the club’s 16-point loss to the Bombers last weekend, Riley emphasised the importance of the playing group improving their defensive performance.
"Obviously you can’t concede 150 points in any level of football and think you’re going to get the chocolate so we have to improve that facet of our game.
"Too many naive people think defence is the six people that stand in the back half of the oval. It doesn’t work like that any more.
"Defence is very closely correlated to how the ball is locked in your forward line [and] to the manner in which the opposition can attack into their forward line."
Riley said the coaching staff would be looking for improvement from Kade Simpson after a couple of quiet weeks.
"Kade’s a lot better player than he’s played for us in the last two weeks.
"He’s in our leadership group and he is a good AFL player. We’ll be looking for him to not only rebound in the game but rebound from that pretty average form."
Irish recruit Setanta O’hAilpin, who was dropped to the reserves for last week’s clash against the Bombers, has been named on an extended interchange bench but Riley wouldn’t confirm whether he would return to the senior line-up.
"He’s in the chop-up, big Setanta. He’s trained well, he’s quite an athletic specimen. As Steven Icke said yesterday, he’s improving so we’ll continue looking at Carlos but he’s in the chop-up at the moment."
Riley insisted that the club was doing everything it could to start winning.
"We’re coming from four wins and three wins in the last two years. We’re not coming from middle of the road, 10 wins, 12 wins," he said.
"We’re starting off the back markers and we know how hard the task is and we’re putting our nose to the grindstone and we’re going for it."
