On Monday’s Hannity, Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity described CBS’s Ted Koppel as a purveyor of “edited fake news.”
Yesterday, CBS published a news segment ostensibly examining the contemporary news media landscape, pushing a narrative of America’s body politic being damaged by inaccurate opinion and politically polarizing opinionated content. CBS framed the allegedly harmful political content as a mostly right-wing, conservative, and Republican news media phenomenon.
Yesterday also saw CBS’ 60 Minutes push a similar narrative with Michael Cernovich.
Hannity claimed to have spent 45 minutes with Koppel, noting that only 70 seconds went to air. Acknowledging time restraints on CBS’s television broadcast platform, he invited CBS and/or Koppel to publish the unedited entirety of their interview online.
“The story was written long before [Koppel] walked into this interview at [Fox News Channel’s studios],” said Hannity. “I was just used it as a prop to advance his narrative.”
Hannity described Koppel as “agenda-driven, opinionated, [and] hypocritical.” He further implied that Koppel and other left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media personalities deceive their audiences by operating upon pretenses of political objectivity and non-partisanship. Koppel, he added, presents himself as a “down the middle, fair and balanced, [and] real journalist.”
Hannity described himself as an “advocacy journalist,” saying the American public can broadly discern between facts and opinions without governmental management of the news media industry.
In order to prevent being deliberately misrepresented via decontextualization of interviews with left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets such as CBS, interviewees should produce their own copies of such interviews. Hannity seemingly neglected to do this, despite his interview with Koppel having taken place in Fox News Channel’s studios in New York City.
CBS is no stranger to the production or purveyance of “fake news.” Hannity invited his audience to reacquaint themselves with Dan Rather’s “Rathergate” scandal and the departure of Sharyl Attkisson from CBS.
CBS presents itself as a politically objective and non-partisan news outlet.
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