CNN’s Jim Acosta took to Twitter on Wednesday night to describe Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity as a “propagandist” who is damaging American perceptions of the news media.
Hannity is a propagandist for profit, peddling lies every night. He says he’s just a talk show host, not a journalist. But he’s injecting poison into the nation’s political bloodstream warping public attitudes about the press. I’m confident in the long run the truth will prevail.
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 2, 2018
Minutes before Acosta published the above-posted tweet, Hannity described him as a “professional Trump-hater” working at “fake news CNN.”
Earlier in the day, Acosta recalled his Tuesday experience at a rally for President Donald Trump in Miami, FL, where he was targeted by rallygoers chanting “CNN sucks,” saying he felt like he was outside of America:
I mean, honestly, it felt like we weren’t in America anymore. I don’t know how to put it any more plainly than that. Americans should not be treating their fellow Americans in this way. But unfortunately, what we’ve seen—and this has been building for some time since the campaign—I’ve been talking about this as an issue since the campaign. When the president, during the campaign, referred to us as the dishonest media, the disgusting news media, liars, scum, and thieves, and so on, and then he rolled that right into the Oval Office, and started calling us the fake news and the enemy of the people, he is whipping these crowds up into a frenzy, to the point where they really want to come after us.
And my sense of it, S.E., is that these opinions that these folks have at these rallies, they’re shaped by what they see in the primetime hours of Fox News and what they hear from some conservative news outlets that just sort of give them this daily diet of what they consider to be terrible things that we do over here at CNN. It’s very unfortunate, but it’s a pitting of American against American and honestly, it needs to stop.
Acosta has previously described Trump’s criticisms of his conduct — and that of CNN’s, more broadly — as an undermining of the First Amendment.
Acosta regularly describes his conduct as that of a politically objective and non-partisan figure. He describes CNN in regular terms, framing his employer’s mission as a “dogged pursuit of the truth.”
We are real news Mr. President. #realnews
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) February 18, 2017
CNN brands itself “The Most Trusted Name In News.”
Update: Hannity Responds:
Jimmy @Acosta sorry your precious feelings are hurt & that people see through your lying bullshit for what it is. FAKE NEWS. #CNNSUCKS
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) August 2, 2018
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.
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