Mere Incompetence? You Decide...
Jon Stewart catches Fox News' Sean Hannity using 9/12 footage to misrepresent the size of the Republican's Capitol Hill health care reform protest of November 5th:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck's Protest Footage | ||||
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Yesterday, Hannity said, "It pains me to say it: Jon Stewart was right." He went on to claim, without providing further details, that it was just an "inadvertent mistake." I'm not buying it. Video archives are digital these days, and they're cross-indexed on a massive scale; you don't just accidentally splice in two-month-old tapes. Toss in the fact that this (presumably) went through an editing/review process before airing, and there's two levels of "inadvertent mistake." Consider that the commentators used that specific two-month-old footage to bolster their attendance estimates, and there's a third level of "inadvertent mistake."
So, either Fox was faking things outright, or they're incompetent at multiple levels. Which is it?
Permalink | tagged Fox, Hannity, Jon Stewart, fake 
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Reader Comments (24)
Probably Hannity's producers.
Of course, we've talked about these things before, like:
* Using other outlets' photos to criticize those same outlets' lack of coverage
* News anchors Inventing quotes out of thin air to push talking points
...so I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this one.
OK.
heheh..... According to Gray everybody is incompetant at Foxnews except for Sean Hannity. Which makes sense and all because Foxnews must have become the most successful news network by being staffed by incompetent boobs.
Or there is perhaps an assertion that Foxnews became the #1 news network by consistantly slyly shaping their content to reinforce what their viewers wanted to believe about the world and themselves. Nah..... it couldn't be that. It must be the incompetence thingy.....
I said nothing of the kind. I'm not a Hannity fan, just pointing out that producers have influence over content in segments.
You mean the 9/12 videos people called phooie and over exaggerated?
Does this make the video a misrepresentation of a misrepresentation?
Very true, but you also didn't venture to give an answer to Wes' question of incompetence or faking things.
So I was left to fill in the blanks and amuse myself as necessary.
KwAwk;
Don’t you mean?
“Or there is perhaps an assertion that MSNBC the #4 news network by consistantly slyly shaping their content to reinforce what their viewers wanted to believe about the world and themselves. Nah..... it couldn't be that.”
I’ve fixed your paragraph for realism.
It was an attempt to show that Wes' question is unanswerable as framed. I attempted to answer within the framework of the question.
That FOX is biased right, is indisputable...yet the entire network cannot be blamed for either the attempted deception or incompetence, of a lone program's producers. It's a judgment call at best.
Actually it's just another in a long, long line of Fox Opinion Channel's distortions. But hey, keep making excuses for them...
Rivaled only by a long, long line of MSNBC distortions.
Who cares? It's not like MSNBC is an actual news network.
(See how that works both ways?)
Gray - I'm not sure anybody questions that from a prime time political perspective point of view thing that MSNBC is attempting to do for the left what Fox has done for the right. But I'm not sure that I've seen much evidence that it has bled over into the news part of the programming in the manner that it has at Fox.
This is because a lot of the news content at MSNBC is driven by NBC news which is independent from MSNBC. Perhaps I'm wrong and you can point me to some evidence.
There has however been repeated documentation of the political side of Foxnews driving the news side of Foxnews, including a disturbing pattern of mislabeling the party affiliation of politicians based upon whether it would be beneficial to the right, cheerleading the tea party movement, and scandal mongering in the political shows seeping over into news coverage.
kwAwk;
I'll put the accuracy of Fox against any T.V. news agency you choose. None of them are perfect. As for NBC being holier than their scumbag brothers over at MSNBC. Why I turn on Sunday Football and I have that political goon Keith Olbermann on the T.V. working in his political digs when all I want is sports. But of course that's "NBC" they can't be bias. Only Fox is biased. LOL.
Keith Olbermann is the reason I tivo Sunday Night Football, so I can skip past all his pregame/halftime douchebaggery.
Of course not.
But, well, I'm trying to think of some other "news" organization that did not dispute it tried to force a reporter to broadcast a story it knew was false, but argued in a court filing the FCC's policies against deliberately falsifying news are more in the nature of suggestions than regulations, and it had no obligation to honor them.
Nope, can't think of any.
Check out New World Communications v. Akre, Tom. It's fascinating. You'll never look at Fox the same way again, I promise you that.
Yeah, this seems much worse.
Winston;
Kind of like CBS being complicit with Dan Rather in the infamous "fake but true National Guard memos" on George Bush? By all means yes, I can't look at the news the same way any more either.
Well, look, Tom, if you can’t distinguish between Dan Rather exercising poor judgment in not thoroughly corroborating documents critical to his story vs. Fox deliberately and intentionally falsifying a story (and claiming it’s entitled to), I just really can’t help you. I guess that’s been true for a long time.
You angry tantrum-pitchers live in a world all your own.
ROFLMAO....yeah, Ol' Dan was just exercising poor judgment. Do you do stand up on weekends?
Gray;
My thoughts exactly.
Winston, do you have any good a Rabbi, a Priest and a Minister walked in the bar jokes to tell....?
Amazing to me that the wingnuts try to deflect 10 years worth of bias and slanted news from Fox using one news story from CBS that happened 10 years ago.
Also interesting to note that it was never proven that the documents were fake, only that they could not be authenticated, yet wingnuts still gloat that they somehow disproved the story, even though Bush never denied it himself.
I'm still waiting for some proof of radical bias in MSNBC news coverage.
The CBS Fake National Guard memos; the Holy Grail of leftdummydum pursuit. LOL. Oh' btw KwAwk; the truthers always have an outlet at MSNBC for some "revelation" that the government i.e. Republicans brought the towers down. Not that MSNBC shows any ' radical bias' or anything. No, not really.
Dan Rather is chasing that unicorn.