FOX News' Latest Ambush: GE Shareholders Meeting
Reported by Ellen - April 23, 2009 -
Dear FOX News,
Why haven't you sent your ambush guy to Sean Hannity? You've been up on your high horses over Janeane Garofalo's comments on MSNBC, you even thought it worthwhile to ambush the GE shareholders meeting to express your outrage about them. And yet you did not seem to mind when Sean Hannity's guest, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson said most blacks in Tennessee are racist. Did Hannity or Fox News object? Not a bit. In fact, Hannity's other guest was not allowed the opportunity to challenge that statement. Peterson has returned as a guest on at least two shows since then. Could it be because you only care about racism against whites? Or do you only care when it occurs on other networks?
More about the GE meeting after the jump.
As The Hollywood Reporter reported, FOX News' go-to guy for ambushes, Jesse Watters, infiltrated the GE shareholders meeting yesterday and without identifying himself as a Fox News employee, took to the microphone with a string of objections about MSNBC. The Reporter noted,
When he got the floor, Waters focused his question about MSNBC on Olbermann's interview of actress Janeane Garofalo, who likened conservatives to racists and spoke of "the limbic brain inside a right-winger.""He (Waters (sic)) was complaining that Olbermann didn't bother to challenge her," another GE shareholder said.
Watters' mic was subsequently cut off and when he finished, he "left the gathering to do stand-up interviews with other attendees outside the proceeding." He just happened to have Fox News cameras ready outside.
But Watters' outrage about Garofalo looks hypocritical at best compared to comments on Fox made by Peterson and, as News Hound Priscilla notes, Ann Coulter.
Peterson has a well-documented history of making anti-black comments that were never objected to by Fox:
"The NAACP and Jackson and others have used (the "n- word") for the last 50 years or so in order to manipulate and control white Americans." November 9, 2007, Hannity & Colmes
Commenting about a black minister who said, "Go to hell, white man" to Rudy Giuliani (the two have long since reconciled), Peters said, "Had a white Republican said that about a black man, then they would be burning down the country… White Republican conservatives are not allowed to speak out. But because these people are black, people are black Democrats, they are allowed to get away with it." January 22, 2008, Hannity & Colmes.
Explaining why Michael Richards' use of the "n-word" didn't bother him, Peterson said, “What bothers me is that white folks are building anger, they have a lot of anger because they are falsely accused of being racist and because they can’t speak out about it, it’s gonna come out at the wrong time and the wrong place and then you’re gonna have (Jesse) Jackson and others coming in and saying ‘See, we told you white people are racist. Give me some money.’ And that’s why white America will have to start speaking up.” December 4, 2006, Hannity & Colmes.
H/T News Hound Julie for the tip
