Fox's Sean Hannity Helps GOP Roll Out Romney Campaign Ad Blitz

On Thursday night, Mitt Romney's campaign announced an ad blitz across eight swing states over the next several days. On Friday, Fox News' Sean Hannity aired one of the new ads in full, providing the Republican campaign with free advertising. However, the ad dishonestly edited remarks from former President Clinton, which Hannity did not point out.

In a segment on the Democratic National Convention with Fox News contributor Sarah Palin, Hannity called into question Clinton's support for President Obama by playing the new ad in full. The ad is a part of the GOP's new carpet-bombing ad campaign, which “will run 15 separate ads spread across Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia” and cost the campaign “about $4.5 million.” According to the Huffington Post:

The commercials suggest that Americans are not better off after nearly four years of Obama's leadership. They link Obama to high foreclosure rates, defense cuts, government regulations and the national deficit.

Ignoring the ad's deceptive editing,  Hannity asked Palin whether Clinton was “a good lawyer defending a guilty client.” As Fox News itself has pointed out, however, the ad uses footage of Clinton that is deceptively edited to make it seem as if his support for Obama is not genuine. As the FoxNews.com article noted, “the old campaign video in its entirety made no mention of the economy or Obama's campaign promises. Clinton was instead referring to Obama's claim that he was one of the earliest opponents of the Iraq war.”

Fox has a history of providing free advertising for GOP campaigns, even when those ads are riddled with falsehoods. The network has aggressively promoted ads from GOP Super PAC American Crossroads. Recently, The O'Reilly Factor declared a misleading Romney ad “basically...true,” while Fox's Carl Cameron supported a hypocritical Romney ad on welfare reform.

Fox News itself has produced an anti-Obama ad.