| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck's Protest Footage | ||||
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This week, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart called out Fox News on one of their many instances of altering reality to improve their stance. In the video above, Stewart shows a segment from Sean Hannity where he is playing footage from a recent anti-healtcare rally in the capitol and during the discussion, the footage suddenly switches to Glenn Beck's 9/12 rally. It is spliced together perfectly to make it appear that it is the same day; however, any savvy viewer can tell from the trees and weather that they are clearly different days. This footage was switched to make it appear as though there were more people at the rally than there really were.
The next day, Hannity addressed this problem on his show. He said it was an editing mistake and thanked Stewart for pointing it out. I would be inclined to believe Hannity, chalk it up to a simple error, and move on. That is, if it weren't for the fact that this is nowhere near the first time Fox News has been caught messing with the truth. They have been caught with this kind of conduct many times. Back in March, after saying the statement was made "this weekend," they used a six-month old clip of Vice President Joe Biden saying, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong," while claiming that "after weeks of economic doom and gloom, the Obama administration is now singing a slightly different tune." They have also been known to switch (R) under politicians' names to (D) if said politicians were part of a scandal. For example, when the Mark Foley page scandal broke, they showed old footage of Foley with the subtitle being "Rep. Mark Foley (D) Florida," knowing full well that Mark Foley was a Republican. They did this with Senator Larry Craig as well.
My issue here is not really that Fox News lies. I have always been aware of this. What bothers me is that people still try to argue that Fox News is a legitimate news source. It is entertainment news. It is not real journalism. Any true journalist would be appalled by the tricks Fox News has employed to make their side look better. It's fine if people want to watch this altered reality. I just think that at this point, when they have been called out on so many different things of this nature, we should all be in agreement that it is an altered reality. It cannot be taken seriously as anything but opinion-based, entertainment news. Yet, they are one of the most watched news sources in the country, which says a lot about the kind of people we are. We would much rather hear what we want to hear than hear the truth. If you're looking for the truth, Fox News is the wrong place to be.
The video below is yet another example of Fox News and their altered stories.
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