Jon Stewart Catches Sean Hannity Falsifying Footage To Make GOP Protest Appear Bigger (VIDEO)

The tea party protests continued last week, as Congresswoman Michele Bachmann held an anti-health-care-reform rally on the steps of the Capitol. While she estimated that 20,000-45,000 people attended the event, the Washington Post reported it was actually more like 10,000.

Still, that is a sizable number of Americans exercising their right to free speech and assembly, and that warrants news coverage. But Sean Hannity and his team did more than cover the event. They not only inflated the number in attendance with their words, but actually used footage from a heavily-attended protest this summer to make this health care rally appear more popular. Hannity even pointed out that this was a huge crowd for a Thursday, when the protest footage they used was from a Saturday.

Jon Stewart and his team caught this discrepancy and ran with it, pointing out neither the color of the leaves nor sky in the tacked-on video matched that of the actual footage. They went on to mock Fox by adding more video to the interview, this time from Woodstock and the movie "300."


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Comments

[AN2009]

08:45 PM on 11/21/2009

Just further proof that Sean Hannity is a joke.

[Australian2]

03:04 AM on 11/15/2009

Lies here:

1. The rally was "word of mouth". Wrong. Bachmann's office bussed people in from all over the Northeast, and from other parts of the country.

2. The teabaggers were "polite": They weren't, by all (independa­nt) reports.

3. Pages of the actual healthcare bill were passed around, then explained by Bachmann: Given Bachmann's previous record on the healthcare issue, she's the last person I'd choose to "explain" the facts. Out of three health-rel­ated statements­, one was rated False by Politifact­.com, and the other two "Pants on Fire" - the worst rating they can give, reserved for wilful, deliberate and indefensib­le misreprese­ntations of the truth.

Rep. Bachmann, if you said that the healthcare bill mandated insurance purchase, I'd check for myself.

[SonnyBono]

02:27 AM on 11/15/2009

You know its actually kind of a sad comment on the state of the world where one of the few places you can get an honest news report is Jon Stewart's "fake" news show. What would Ed Morrow say?

[boblobslaw]

01:42 PM on 11/14/2009

This site is full of propaganda­, and is too conglomera­ted of a mess for me to stare at and figure out what blogs/arti­cles I want to read. Too many images/ topics, and no it's not because I can't handle this much informatio­n. It's more a long the lines of we are being bombarded with tons of informatio­n and it is more important too never forget that everyone that writes has a bias and agenda. So great job at getting all these people to your site, but i'm sorry that most of them are probably brainwashe­d and wouldn't actually be able to hold "real" conversati­ons and "debate" in real life. Thnks bye.

[adamson]

03:52 PM on 11/14/2009

This site obviously has a liberal bias. No one ever debated that fact. But the truth is represente­d here. Just as it is on other internet sites.
If you don't like it, you can go

[booboo111]

07:58 PM on 11/14/2009

MZABODUBA YRXEXASA ADUBU.....­.......

[WindmillSlayer]

12:34 PM on 11/14/2009

Ignorance is Strength.
He who controls the past, controls the future.
~Orwell

[esilversurfer]

11:37 PM on 11/13/2009

No wonder the Obama administra­tion had to call out Faux News. There has never been a "news channel" with the sole purpose of disseminat­ing false informatio­n specifical­ly to destroy a presidency­. Unbelievab­le.

[oldpol2]

05:33 AM on 11/14/2009

the most important link I have seen on Faux news
http://vid­eo.google.­com/videop­lay?docid=­6737097743­434902428&­ei=BSP#

[ssol4569]

11:04 PM on 11/13/2009

I have bigger news than this lame story.
In Obama's own words: Check it out

http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch_p­opup?v=tCA­ffMSWSzY#t=28

[oldpol2]

05:40 AM on 11/14/2009

LAME!!!

[Entitlement]

09:21 PM on 11/13/2009

Okay, I asked to have Palin's story and photo taken off the front page of the HP site. I got scrubbed. Maybe it was how I asked. I don't know. This is the only story I can hide in tonight. It's definitely Friday the 13th!!! That's some truly scary stuff.

[Republitarian]

08:40 PM on 11/13/2009

MSNBC runs fake Palin bikini picture:

http://www­.breitbart­.tv/msnbc-­uses-fake-­bikini-pic­-of-palin-­during-liv­e-segment/

Awaiting apology from MSNBC, or for Hardball's zoom-in shot of the the black guy with a gun at the Obama protest claiming racism.

I'd just get a thrill running up my leg if thy apologized­.

[familydad]

07:14 AM on 11/14/2009

AAAAAAAAAA­AAAH!, just found out who you are?......­..........­.don't it just make you sick?

[Megan97401]

08:26 PM on 11/13/2009

Busted!

[Vernon Brown]

05:16 PM on 11/13/2009

I worry that there are people who get their news from news programs.

[powercosmic]

04:59 PM on 11/13/2009

Why are all the folks at these fox rallies old retired geezers that really don't have a "stake in the future" of this country?

They've already lived the "good ole days" 1950's - 1960's and have extracted some measure of security from the economy and the GOVERNMENT­, like GOVERNMENT healthcare called Medicare. So they're all out protesting to prevent younger and much harder working Americans from getting some sense of security.

All these old geezers are doing is prostestin­g to help Wall Street and Insurance companies keep gambling with our money and our future.

Healthcare reform will help take valuable resources off the gambling table and put it in the pockets of hard working middle class Americans.

[Vernon Brown]

05:12 PM on 11/13/2009

I agree

[oldpol2]

05:39 AM on 11/14/2009

Most of us old geezers are supporting health care reform, supporting the reregulati­on of wall street, breaking up the big banks, and fighting global warming.Ju­st because we are not all loud doesn't mean we aren't working to make improvemen­ts for our children and grandchild­ren. Remember your granny loves ya.

[billkarwin]

03:48 PM on 11/13/2009

Doesn't HuffPo do something similar on a daily basis?

We hear a story about one of Obama's policy initiative­s hitting a roadblock, and HuffPo adds a file photo of Obama looking sad. It isn't a photo of Obama reacting to that day's events, it's a file photo from weeks or months ago. I imagine HuffPo has a library of photos of many political leaders, indexed by approximat­e emotion.

When Fox News shows a video of a vastly larger crowd, this could be considered more deceptive, but I'm sure they would say it's just file footage, used to illustrate what a crowd on the National Mall looks like.

How can one distinguis­h these two practices objectivel­y? How exactly is Fox News being deceptive in a damaging way, whereas HuffPo is not? I'm not condoning this behavior of Fox News, I'm just putting this out there as food for thought.

[Vernon Brown]

05:12 PM on 11/13/2009

you're starving me

[Megan97401]

08:29 PM on 11/13/2009

Ha! Took me a minute to get that.

I concur.

[ChristianEcon.com]

05:15 PM on 11/13/2009

HP doesn't pretend to be "fair and balanced" at the same time.

[-swift]

08:55 AM on 11/13/2009

I'm pretty sure Hannity is just a poser. I think he's just milking this teabagger persona for profit. That still makes him despicable­, of course. But I think he's not that dumb. He couldn't possibly be so stupid that he wouldn't realize Stewart would catch him in something so blatant. If he were that stupid, he wouldn't have the brainpower to hold himself upright.

I mean, they must have had a production meeting. They must have, at some point, said, "We're going to use this old footage to make the numbers look bigger." Someone must have asked, "You think Stewart will notice?" Right? They can't all be that stupid. Right?

[the964kid]

02:53 PM on 11/13/2009

'But I think he's not that dumb.'

Ummmm actually, I'm pretty sure he is exactly that dumb. He cant be that good of an actor.

[peener]

06:33 AM on 11/13/2009

the entire team on the daily show are pretty damn talented. lets hope everyone there gets some major recognitio­n. they definitely deserve some sort of accolades. trying to keep media outlets honest has got to be tough work.