Sean Hannity: 'Jon Stewart Was Right' About Swapped Demonstration Footage

A day after Daily Show host Jon Stewart accused Sean Hannity of swapping protest footage to make a Nov. 5 anti-health reform rally look larger, Hannity conceded that his program used an "incorrect video" during the segment. "It pains me to say it: Jon Stewart was right," Hannity said, according to the New York Times' Media Decoder blog. Hannity called the incident an "inadvertent mistake" and did not explain how it had happened.

On Tuesday night, Stewart joined a number of media watchdog organizations in claiming that Hannity had dramatically exaggerated the numbers of last week's protest. Stewart said footage shown on Hannity's program while he was interviewing the rally's organizer, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), looked markedly different than footage that had been seen earlier in the program. A closer comparison revealed that the majority of the footage rolling during the segment with Bachmann was from September's "9/12" protest, which had been a much larger event. A small notation on the screen said "earlier," but Hannity referred to the visuals as "Thursday," implying that the footage was of the Nov. 5 rally.

Hannity is not the only Fox News host to be accused of using misleading video footage recently. While criticizing White House communications director Anita Dunn for her alleged love of Mao Zedong, Glenn Beck chopped off a clip of Dunn's speech that altered the context of her statement, according to the Web site Media Matters for America. The "doctored" clip was used on several Fox programs.

Video: Sean Hannity Apologizes for Video Swap, Nov. 11, 1009



Video: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Nov. 10, 2009