Fox News host Sean Hannity says talk show hosts like himself are better investigative reporters than the rest of the media.
The primetime star made the declaration late Tuesday while hyping up Fox News contributor Sara Carter, whom Hannity consistently describes as an “investigative reporter” despite top brass at the network asking him not to do so, as The Daily Beast reported just last week.
Perhaps in reaction to the revelations that the network, unlike Hannity, does not think Carter's work passes for genuine news reporting, Hannity once again elevated Carter's status on his show, introducing her as an “investigative reporter” before she went on to discuss a piece from her eponymous blog.
ADVERTISEMENT
After presenting the piece as a “big new report” from “Fox News investigative reporter Sara Carter”—despite the fact that the report won’t be picked up by Fox News’ “hard news” side—Hannity railed against the rest of the media for supposedly failing to be as good at uncovering bombshells as Carter. (The big takeaway from her “investigative” report? Claims already made repeatedly by Trump allies that intelligence officials abused their authority to investigate his campaign, and that those officials are now putting up resistance to cooperating with Attorney General William Barr.)
“While we actively search for truth every night on this program,” Hannity declared. “Well then you have the media mob, the 99 percent—by the way, every newsroom in America failed the American people!”
“Isn’t it interesting that the talk show hosts, the ones that yes, we do investigative reporting, straight reporting, we give opinion, we are honest about opinion, we even do sports and culture. Isn’t it funny that it took the talk show hosts to break open the story, because they have such an agenda-driven shows every day that they call news? It’s fake!”
This is a similar argument that the primetime star has made before about his program, insisting that it is akin to an “entire newspaper” in that he delivers a combination of investigative reporting and opinion. At that time, however, he said he didn’t “claim to be a journalist.” (Hannity historically has been unable to decide whether he should or shouldn't be called a journalist.)
