‘Do You Know How Many People Watch Fox?’: Jedediah Bila Defends Former Employer on The View
On The View today, the women discussed CBS’s Ted Koppel telling Fox News’s Sean Hannity he’s bad for America.
“I actually do think he’s good for America in the same way that I think Rachel Maddow is good for America, Bill Maher is good for America,” said former Fox employee Jedediah Bila. “The more opinions the better, and that doesn’t mean that I’m going to watch him and I’m going to agree and I’m going to form my opinions based on what he’s saying…”
Whoopi Goldberg said she doesn’t think Hannity uses many facts on his show and asked if that bothered Bila. Immediately after Bila said she thought there was some fact-based reporting on Hannity, Sunny Hostin pointed out that he’s just not a journalist. Bila responded to that by saying he never claims to be.
Sara Haines said she doesn’t believe people know the difference between a journalist and a commentator. Hostin agreed with that assessment. Later, they went over how Donald Trump, specifically, has shown he regards opinionated hosts on Fox News as purveyors of truthful and fact-based reporting. The best example of that is, of course, his reliance on Andrew Napolitano‘s “commentary” regarding the president’s alleged surveillance at the hands of British intelligence.
Bila agreed that the president “shouldn’t be going to anywhere” but internal sources for his news, let alone opinion programming, but Joy Behar jumped in to say that Fox is “on [Trump’s] level.”
“Do you know how many people watch Fox News in this country?” Bila demanded. “There’s a lot of people who watch that and there’s a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump that feel that represents their view and they’re happy that’s represented in news somewhere even if it’s in the opinion section!”
Watch above.
[image via screengrab]
——
