{"id":12594,"date":"2007-08-19T13:00:16","date_gmt":"2007-08-19T17:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12594.html"},"modified":"2007-08-19T13:00:16","modified_gmt":"2007-08-19T17:00:16","slug":"dropping-the-pretense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/dropping-the-pretense\/","title":{"rendered":"Dropping the pretense"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who’s seen Fox News knows its on-air personalities offer Republicans in-kind contributions with practically every broadcast. Once in a while, though, they drop the pretense<\/a> and make the support more direct.<\/p>\n

It’s no secret that Sean Hannity, the conservative Fox News commentator, has helped to raise Rudy Giuliani’s profile – but now he’s helped the former mayor raise money, too.<\/p>\n

In a little noticed event this month, Hannity — co-host of Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” and host of a popular WABC radio show — introduced the Republican front-runner at a closed-door, $250-per-head fund-raiser Aug. 9 in Cincinnati, campaign officials acknowledge.<\/p>\n

In so doing, some believe that Hannity — while clearly a commentator paid to express his opinions — crossed the line from punditry into financial rainmaking for a presidential candidate whose bottom line is now better for it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Atrios’ joke about calling a bloggers’ ethics panel comes to mind….<\/p>\n

I can appreciate the fact that Fox News exists<\/i> to blur the line between reporting and advocacy, but this seems over the top, even by the network’s standards. Indeed, when Dan Rather’s daughter organized and hosted a Democratic Party fundraiser in Texas in 2001, and the then-CBS anchor made an appearance, Bill O’Reilly blasted the ethical impropriety.<\/p>\n

“Now Rather gave a speech at a fund-raiser, so money changed hands,” O’Reilly said on the air. “I mean, I wouldn’t do that.”
\n
\nAnd in this instance, Hannity didn’t just make an appearance, he was the special guest.<\/p>\n

The Aug. 9 fund-raiser where Hannity worked the crowd for Giuliani, held at Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse in downtown Cincinnati, was closed to the press. No known recording of his comments exist.<\/p>\n

But some who were there – including Hannity’s boss at WABC, Phil Boyce – said Hannity was typically effusive.<\/p>\n

“He talked about Rudy’s leadership after 9\/11, about how Rudy had turned the city around and taken people off the welfare rolls,” said Boyce “There wasn’t anything he said that I haven’t heard him say on the radio.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, but don’t some kind of professional standards still exist for media personalities?<\/p>\n

Never mind, don’t answer that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who’s seen Fox News knows its on-air personalities offer Republicans in-kind contributions with practically every broadcast. Once in a while, though, they drop the pretense and make the support more direct. It’s no secret that Sean Hannity, the conservative Fox News commentator, has helped to raise Rudy Giuliani’s profile – but now he’s helped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}