Sean Hannity’s Bias Filled His Special On Media Bias
Reported by Ellen - April 25, 2011 -
Co-written by Aria and Ellen
If ever there was a case of jaw-dropping hypocrisy on Fox News and from Sean Hannity in particular, it was his special hour-long show Friday night (4/22/11) on media bias. You didn’t have to wait long for Hannity's bias to emerge. Right in the beginning of the first segment, Hannity complained about the “Obama mania media’s liberal bias” against the GOP. He then promised to show us the major scandals that came out of “liberal bias”… because even though Fox News calls Hannity a biased commenter, not a reporter, and even though Hannity has offered us some of the most one-sided interviews known to mankind, well, I guess we were supposed to trust that he was offering us an unbiased show this one time.
So what did Hannity turn up? That liberal bias in the media first appeared as a “bizarre tendency for the left to apologize for America’s enemies.” Well, surely Hannity would have proof. But he played a clip from ABC News’ Jerry King saying that women in the workplace were glorified under communism. Um, so women workers in the former USSR were America’s enemies? Can I get a little context on that? No, you just want to say that the left paints the influential right as either evil or stupid? OK…
Hannity also brought up the now-infamous reporting by Walter Duranty on Stalin in which he said that reports of famine in the Ukraine were “an exaggeration or malignant propaganda… In a socialist utopia like the Soviet Union… you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” What Hannity forgot to mention is that the Times has repudiated Duranty’s reporting and refers to him as “discredited.” Contrast that with the deferential treatment of the discredited Andrew Breitbart on The O’Reilly Factor that same night and on Hannity not long before that.
Meanwhile, Hannity still had not provided an example of the left apologizing for America’s enemies. We saw a clip saying that Soviets under Gorbachev “look back almost longingly” to the Stalin era, that Russia’s social safety net disappeared with communism and a clip pointing out Castro’s success with education. So where were the apologies? Can’t we see one?
No, we saw Brent Bozell and Gerard Alexander claim that the left sees Communist Russia as a “wonderful experiment.” Can we please see a clip providing evidence? Other than that one comment by Duranty in the 30’s? No? Well, then… let’s hear Hannity change the subject to more attacks on liberals. Apparently, until the advent of William F. Buckley, the “intellectual elite” of the left sat as the self-righteous ruling class. Gerard Alexander even used the words “self righteous.” According to Hannity, Alexander and Juan Williams, the tensions rose when the Democrats didn’t like a new way of thinking to challenge their own. Wonder how often they told people to shut up or cut their mic.
Still not allowing himself be hindered with actual evidence, Hannity changed the subject to how Republicans are unfairly portrayed as evil. Is that anything like how Obama is labeled as racist by Fox News? Glenn Beck’s done it, Megyn Kelly’s done it. You’ve done it, too, Sean. In fact, you’ve done it a few times. In fact, denigrating Democrats as evil is a regular staple of your shows.
As Media Matters noted, one of Hannity's examples of the liberal media denigrating conservatives, Katie Couric calling Ronald Reagan an airhead, was deceptively cropped. What she actually said – in discussing an upcoming interview with Reagan biographer Edmund Morris - was, “But in advance of that, we're going to see why Morris thinks Reagan was an airhead, but still a great president.” Media Matters caught another deceptively edited clip later in the same broadcast.
But we get the message. Bullyboys like Hannity love to dish out attacks on anyone who disagrees with them while screeching like stuck chickenhawks about what victims of liberal oppression they are (pay no attention to the multimillionaire earnings or the prime time television show or the national radio show). Cry us a river.
