Sean Hannity joined colleague Tucker Carlson in completely absolving himself of any responsibility in promoting the now-debunked accusation that CNN scripted questions in its gun violence town hall with the survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Even worse, while giving himself a pass, Hannity claimed "always to strive for the truth."
Last week, in front of an audience at CPAC, Hannity touted the dubious accusation against CNN, made by the young, traumatized Parkland shooting survivor Colton Haab, in a long tear against the network:
HANNITY: Fake news CNN also has another serious problem on their hands. Colton Haab, he’s a Stoneman Douglas High School student. He actually saved lives during the shooting. And he is reporting that CNN actually tried to script his questions at last night’s town hall that he didn’t end up participating in because he wasn’t going to be a part of that farce.
After playing a clip of Haab saying that CNN “absolutely” put its words into his question, Hannity continued his rant.
HANNITY: So the student is saying.
(BOOS)
Fake news scripted his questions. And what did you call them?
AUDIENCE: Fake news.
HANNITY: Oh, OK.
And they are saying they would never provide scripted questions and Colton’s father withdrew his name from participating before the show began.
Hannity continued by citing other supposed examples of CNN scripting questions.
As I explained in a previous post, the real fake news was on Fox. Yesterday, Haab’s father admitted to altering an email provided to Fox that purported to show CNN changing his son’s question. But you don’t have to be a television insider to realize that Haab’s claim never passed the smell test. Yet both Carlson and Hannity were so busy promoting the accusation, neither questioned a word.
Hannity’s anti-CNN screed began at about 13:00 in his February 22, 2018 monologue (second video below) and went on for nearly three minutes.
Last night, Hannity spent 33 seconds on his correction. It exonerated both himself and Haab’s father of any wrongdoing. Also, like Carlson, Hannity failed to apologize for spreading a bogus smear - while posing as a dedicated purveyor of truth.
HANNITY: We have a quick update on the story we told you about last week.
A Stoneman Douglas high school student, he was supposed to appear on CNN’s gun-control town hall, he said the network try to script his question.
Both he and his father said he had emails to prove that, told the entire media. Tonight he told the AP he omitted some words from the email, he didn’t do it on purpose, therefore what he told the news outlets last week wasn’t accurate, our job is always to strive for the truth and we want to correct the record.
Watch the guy so quick to accuse others of “fake news” shrug off his own promotion of an obviously untrue story below, from the February 27, 2018 Hannity.
(Transcript excerpts above via FoxNews.com)