Veteran newsman Ted Koppel has called Fox News commentator Sean Hannity “bad for America”
The two men were speaking on the CBS Sunday Morning television programme about the current state of journalism after a divisive 2016 presidential election and Mr Hannity and Fox News' coverage of US politics.
Mr Hannity ran through a list of what he considers former President Obama's economic failures, saying that there is "an information crisis in this country".
Mr Koppel, a host of ABC's Nightline for 25 years, said that Mr Hannity was right that the US is "stuck in an ideological rut" but said that programmes like Mr Hannity's "as popular as they are, haven't helped".
In March 2016 he criticised [Fox News host Bill] O'Reilly, on his programme O'Reilly Factor, about his interviews with then-candidate Donald Trump. Mr O'Reilly asked how Mr Koppel would handle interviewing Mr Trump and Mr Koppel responded: “It’s irrelevant how I would do it. And you know who made it irrelevant? You did.”
Mr Hannity tried to explain that there is no doubt his programme is "branded a conservative show" so the public knows what they are getting.
Mr Koppel acknowledged that Mr Hannity is good at what he does but fired back "you have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.”
When Mr Hannity asked if Mr Koppel thought the Fox News host was "bad for America" Mr Koppel responded with a terse, "Yeah."
After the interview aired Mr Hannity took to Twitter to explain his side of the "edited" footage.
This is an argument Mr Koppel has been making for several years. In a 2010 Washington Post column, Mr Koppel wrote "The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic.”
