Fox News host Sean Hannity falsely asserted that Bill Moyers, former host of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) program NOW, “charge[d] that yours truly, among others, were unfairly influencing the 2004 election because we dared to have an opinion.” Hannity was referring to a video clip of the December 17, 2004, edition of NOW, which Moyers re-aired during a May 24 speech at the Future of American Media Caucus. In fact, what Moyers criticized was not Hannity's expressing an “opinion,” but what he described as baseless “Kerry-bashing” by Hannity and other right-wing commentators; Moyers accused them of unfairly influencing the election because they made damaging claims against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) without -- or even contrary to -- any evidence.

Hannity's false characterization of Moyers' comments occurred during a “Moyers-bashing” segment on the May 24 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes with right-wing pundit Ann Coulter in which Coulter asserted that by expressing concern that the right wing increasingly dominates the news media, Moyers is acting as though “it's 1938 Germany and Bill Moyers is a Jew.” Coulter also stated that "[Republican Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Y.] Tomlinson and many others thought that maybe PBS was just a smidgen liberal, was not really fair and balanced down the middle, the way Fox News is."

Contrary to Hannity's claim that Moyers had criticized him for having an opinion, Moyers actually had blamed Hannity and others for passing off demonstrably false statements as opinion. Moyers opened the December 17, 2004, edition of NOW by noting that while listening to conservative talk radio hosts such as Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh and Hannity “on the eve of the election,” he heard only “lies, distortions, and half-truths ... paraded before us as informed opinion.”

One example Moyers highlighted, which Media Matters for America has also extensively documented, was “how right-wing pundits ganged up to spread the message, without a shred of hard evidence, that Osama bin Laden's latest video, which arrived just days before the election, meant the terrorist was supporting John Kerry,” noting that Hannity made such a claim with “no fact to back that up” and “no effort to substantiate that with documentation.”

Similarly, Moyers aired a clip of Hannity asserting that the anti-Kerry group Swift Vets and POWs for Truth (formerly Swift Boat Veterans for Truth) “contradict just about every story he [Kerry] has told about his experience” in Vietnam. Moyers noted that Hannity and others in the “partisan media” cited the group “even though the official record appeared to contradict most of what the Swift Boaters were saying.”

Media Matters for America runs the Hands Off Public Broadcasting campaign, an effort to ensure that public broadcasting remains independent and free from political pressure and to highlight conservative misinformation in and about public broadcasting.