On his Fox News show on Thursday night, Sean Hannity underlined an obvious point about the current push to publicize "adult entertainment" providers like Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal and their allegations of (consensual) adultery with Donald Trump before he was president.
"It's about an alleged affair, not proven, and, of course, very different Bill Clinton and Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and, of course, Paula Jones," Hannity said. The networks were extremely reluctant to publicize allegations of sexual harassment and even sexual assault when the accusers were talking about a Democrat president. Hannity cited Media Research Center data from the 1990s:
SEAN HANNITY: We might have a brand new name for their leader, their chief, their CEO, Jeff Zucker, the porn king of cable news. Now, of course, porn king Jeff Zucker and his colleagues at the bleep-hole network, they're not alone in their Stormy obsession. NBC, ABC, CBS and others also featuring saturated coverage of the story.
Now, predictably, the same level of media interest was not present back in the early 1990s when then-President Bill Clinton was accused of having multiple extramarital affairs and even worse, engaging in serious instances of sexual misconduct. By the way, in the case of Gennifer Flowers, she was proven right but I remember James Carville -- oh, he worked and was one of the people talking about it or dragging her through a trailer park about Paula Jones.
Remember Paula Jones? She accused Bill Clinton of literally pulling down his pants and exposing himself. And according to the Media Research Center, the first three days of that scandal, ABC provided a whopping 16 seconds of coverage. NBC, CBS, they ignored it.
And next, there's the case of Kathleen Willey, and she said that Bill Clinton groped, grabbed, fondled, touched, kissed her against her will inside the Oval Office. That story breaks, how's your fake news handle it? ABC ignores it, NBC, CBS gave it a whopping 34 seconds of coverage, again, according to the Media Research Center. CNN, meanwhile, they dedicated 26 seconds of coverage during their evening newscast.
Then, of course, you have the serious allegation of rape, Juanita Broaddrick. And I interviewed Juanita Broaddrick, one of the toughest interviews I ever did. This surfaced first in 1998. Media Research Center tells us ABC, CBS totally ignored the breaking story. NBC aired seven minutes of coverage, but not before initially spiking its pre-taped [Dateline NBC] interview with Juanita Broaddrick.
Now, this proves what I've been saying about journalism since, what, 2007 or '08, it's dead and buried in this country.
On the day Zucker called Fox a "propaganda machine," Hannity was mocking CNN as porn-obsessed: "If you're looking for 24/7, never-ending, looped around porn-related news, CNN fake news, they have you covered."
