Viggo Mortensen: Fox News Is 'Appallingly Shallow And Manipulative'

Viggo Mortensen is all for reading things you don't agree with to get a broader sense of the world, but he just can't tolerate Fox News.

The actor dropped by HuffPost Live on Tuesday to discuss his new film "The Two Faces Of January," and he got to talking with host Ricky Camilleri about media. Specifically, he doesn't get why people use today's "constantly evolving means of communicating" to "reinforce their own point of view." Mortensen said he enjoys indulging in an alternative take, but some of it is particularly troublesome:

"I take an interest. I do listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Mike Savage, and I do watch Fox News once in a while. I can only take small doses of it because they're so appallingly shallow and manipulative. ... It's like watching a really bad movie. It's like watching an Ed Wood movie and going, 'Wow.' Well, now that's an insult to Ed Wood, actually. But, you know, like a horror movie -- just poorly made."

That's not to say that left-wing media outlets aren't guilty of the same thing, but Mortensen feels conservative commentators tend to use an especially egregious method of presenting information.

"You can say that about so-called left-wing radio -- it's generally talking points as well. But I think there's more of an effort to deal with facts, even if maybe there are sins of omissions and so forth on the left as well. It's generally not as brazen of a form of lying as you get from Fox," Mortensen said.

Catch the full HuffPost Live conversation with Viggo Mortensen here.

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