On Sean Hannity's radio show, sexual predator Bill O'Reilly weighs in on Chris Cuomo's journalistic ethics

Hannity previously helped O'Reilly attack women who came forward to speak out about O'Reilly's harassment

Written by Media Matters Staff

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On Sean Hannity's radio show, sexual predator Bill O'Reilly weighs in on Chris Cuomo's journalistic ethics

On Sean Hannity's radio show, sexual predator Bill O'Reilly attacks Chris Cuomo over journalism ethics

From the December 1, 2021, edition of Premiere Radio's The Sean Hannity Show

BILL O'REILLY (GUEST): But look at this Chris Cuomo thing, and I saw your comments about Cuomo -- that you believe in second chances, and I thought that was very charitable. Cuomo gets caught up in something that he had no idea, he was trying to help his brother, okay. But essential Journalism 101 -- and I have a masters degree in journalism, okay -- essential Journalism 101 is if you are personally involved in any story, you recuse yourself, just like he should --

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Here's -- here's what I would argue me on this --

O'REILLY: Wait, wait, here me out on this. 

HANNITY: No, I'm listening to you. 

OREILLY: Okay, so number one: Chris Cuomo, who's not a journalist, okay? He doesn't recuse himself, but even worse than that, his company doesn't walk in and say, "You can't cover your brother. You can't, so it's not going to be permitted."  The company should have done that -- 

HANNITY: Let me interject this, Bill. The difference, you see, I think Chris is a talk show host like I am, but I think he calls himself a journalist. I think he may even believe it. He's not. 

O'REILLY: He's not. Look, he worked at ABC after he worked at Fox. I remember him coming into my office and -- and I like him. Alright, came into my office, very respectful, sat down, said, "Look, I got an offer to go to ABC News to do X, Y and Z. I like it at Fox. I'm learning a lot. You know, what would you do?" Because I had worked at ABC as a correspondent for two years.

And you know, I gave him, as I would give anyone, the best advice I could give him. But it is clear to me that Chris Cuomo was in the business of celebrity -- trying to get famous, trying to make money rather than digging around trying to break stories. That's what real journalists do. They try to find out facts that the American people don't know. Is that going on anywhere? Not much.

In early 2017, Bill O'Reilly was forced out at Fox News “after the disclosure of a series of sexual harassment allegations against him and an internal investigation that turned up even more.”

Months later, he appeared on Fox host Sean Hannity's radio show, where Hannity helped him attack the women who came forward:

Fox News host Sean Hannity turned his radio show into a platform for embattled former colleague Bill O’Reilly to undermine the reports of sexual harassment that led Fox to terminate his employment earlier this year, and repeatedly urged him to return to the network. Hannity’s decision to take the side of his former colleague over his employer provides more evidence that he is a rogue actor who is no longer restrained by the network.

On the September 18 edition of Hannity's show, O’Reilly portrayed himself as the “victim” of women who he claimed had falsely accused him of sexual harassment and nefarious groups like Media Matters that had criticized him. He largely focused his fire on Perquita Burgess, a former Fox News clerical temp who had reported workplace misconduct by O’Reilly to the 21st Century Fox hotline in April. As he sought to discredit her, O’Reilly used an article on right-wing website NewsMax.com to point to her arrest in 2015 for filing a false report to the police. Earlier today, O'Reilly had urged his Twitter followers to read the “very telling” article, which stated that the arrest “has raised serious doubts as to her credibility.” LawNewz reported that O’Reilly’s team was actually behind the NewsMax piece, which it had shopped to at least one other outlet before it ran in NewsMax. According to LawNewz, “The details of the arrest were so flimsy that The Washington Post apparently refused to go with it after an extensive investigation.”

O’Reilly suggested to Hannity that this was the beginning of a campaign of revenge, calling it “the first of many that we’re going to have for the American people” and adding that he has conducted an investigation into many of the women who had reported him and it produced “shocking” results.

For his part, Hannity said O’Reilly was “the latest victim” of a progressive campaign aimed at getting conservatives pushed off the air, adding that he wished the two of them had teamed up earlier to oppose the “liberal fascism” of their opponents.