Sean Hannity Slams Shepard Smith For Calling His Kind Of Fox Show Strictly Entertainment

I agree with Shep:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sean-hannity-shepard-smith-opinion-journalist_us_5aac369be4b0c33361b076b8

 

We can treat this as a personality battle between these two men or as an expression of more abstract issues.

On that second more abstract plane, I sort of semi-agree with Shep. There's WAY too much opinion in what is ostensibly news these days. That's how I would define "fake news" and it's probably the number one thing that's destroying journalism at the present time.

I disagree that Hannity's show is "strictly entertainment". It's biased sure, but so is what we read on the New York Times editorial page. That's kind of how I categorize people like Hannity and his opposite numbers on other leftist networks. They present opinions and they are the journalistic equivalent of columnists. The New York Times often has prominent liberal academics and pundits writing pieces for their editorial pages, and Hannity often has newsmaker interviews with prominent conservative politicians and intellectuals. Not a whole lot of difference there.

And it's not like the same kind of editorial bias doesn't find its way into more straightforward news programming. Remember how for weeks CNN news programming was 24-7 Ferguson, Baltimore and Black Lives Matter? Obviously somebody in their news hierarchy made a decision to support the anti-police movement and ordered the newsrooms to push it as hard as possible. Today whenever anyone is shot, they try to frame it as "gun violence". I've even seen Shepard Smith editorializing now and then, letting everyone know what he agreed and disagreed with, sometimes with considerable sarcasm towards the latter.

The New York Times and the Washington Post make editorial decisions every day regarding what to put above the fold on their front pages. The New York Times editorial board has been quite upfront boasting that they 'set the nation's agenda' each day in their editorial meeting. And does that NY-imposed agenda ever reflect the priorities of the 50% of America that voted for Donald Trump and in most cases never reads the New York Times?

The thing is, with Shawn Hannity and Rachel Maddow, or anything on the Huffington Post or Breitbart for that matter, you kind of know what you will be getting. So people with similar opinions tune in because they like what they hear. Shepard Smith can call that "entertainment" if he likes, and I have some sympathy with the sentiment, but it's less disingenuous to package political bias where it can be easily recognized than to sneak it in as "objective journalism". That's just fake news.