Fox News' Brit Hume is at the center of a burgeoning controversy about how conservatives are twisting the words of FDR in order to support their own policies. Media Matters for America reports:
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann and former Social Security associate commissioner James Roosevelt Jr. examined how FOX News Washington managing editor Brit Hume and other pundits distorted a quote by Roosevelt Jr.'s grandfather, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in order to claim that the former president would have supported privatizing Social Security.
During their discussion, Olbermann referenced the distortions by Hume, nationally syndicated radio host and former Reagan administration official William J. Bennett, and Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund. Roosevelt Jr. echoed Air America Radio host Al Franken's call for Hume to resign, saying that "he rearranged those sentences in an outrageous distortion, one that really calls for a retraction, an apology, maybe even a resignation."
Visit the Media Matters site for a transcript of the Olberman interview.
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Jessica Clark is a writer, editor and researcher, with more than 15 years of experience spanning commercial, educational, independent and public media production. Currently she is the Research Director for American University’s Center for Social Media. She also writes a monthly column for PBS’ MediaShift on new directions in public media. She is the author, with Tracy Van Slyke, of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media (2010, New Press).
