{"id":3974,"date":"2005-04-15T09:00:09","date_gmt":"2005-04-15T13:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3974.html"},"modified":"2005-04-15T09:00:09","modified_gmt":"2005-04-15T13:00:09","slug":"hannitys-hackery-reaches-new-depths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/hannitys-hackery-reaches-new-depths\/","title":{"rendered":"Hannity&#8217;s hackery reaches new depths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not unusual for talk-show guests to get prepped on how best to answer questions before going on the air. Lawmakers and political figures often even sit down with staffers to do &#8220;role play&#8221; interviews, getting coached along the way, as practice before a show.<\/p>\n<p>But leave it to Fox News&#8217; Sean Hannity to do the unprecedented: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/news\/col\/grove\/\">coaching guests between commercials<\/a>, helping them to toe the right-wing line.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On the March 31 installment of the shouting-head show, the guests included two of the late Terri Schiavo&#8217;s former nurses, Trudy Capone and Carla Sauer Iyer, arguing that their patient wasn&#8217;t brain-dead. <\/p>\n<p>Between commercials, according to an off-air audiotape obtained by investigative comedian Harry Shearer for last Sunday&#8217;s episode of his weekly radio program, &#8220;Le Show,&#8221; Hannity coached the women on exactly how to respond when liberal co-host Alan Colmes cross-examined them. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just say, &#8216;I&#8217;m here to tell what I saw,'&#8221; Hannity can be heard instructing his guests. &#8220;No matter what the question, &#8216;I&#8217;m here to tell you what I saw. I&#8217;m here to tell you what I saw.'&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Hannity adds helpfully: &#8220;Say, &#8216;I&#8217;m not going to be distracted by silliness.&#8217; How&#8217;s that? Does that help you? Look into that camera. Look at me when I&#8217;m talking.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sure enough, once the show was back from commercial, token lefty Alan Colmes quizzed the nurses, who followed Hannity&#8217;s instructions. &#8220;I don&#8217;t have any opinions or judgments. I was there,&#8221; Iyer told Colmes on the air.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, once the segment ended, Hannity boasted of his coached-guests&#8217; performance.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After the segment ends, Hannity gushes off the air to the nurses: &#8220;We got the points out. It&#8217;s hard, this isn&#8217;t easy. But you did great, both of you. Thank you, guys. Those nurses are powerful, aren&#8217;t they?&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course. Hannity thinks they &#8220;did great,&#8221; because they managed to repeat the talking points he gave them during a commercial break.<\/p>\n<p>I know this is folly, but if FNC were a real network, Hannity would be pulled from the air for a stunt like this. Indeed, the fact that few will even be surprised by this revelation speaks volumes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not unusual for talk-show guests to get prepped on how best to answer questions before going on the air. Lawmakers and political figures often even sit down with staffers to do &#8220;role play&#8221; interviews, getting coached along the way, as practice before a show. But leave it to Fox News&#8217; Sean Hannity to do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974","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=3974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}