What To Know
- Leftist streamer Hasan Piker is preparing a defamation suit against CNN’s Scott Jennings for airing a deceptively edited video.
- The filing could expand to include Fox News host Harris Faulkner, who also cited the misleading video on air.
- Piker criticized mainstream media for spreading misinformation and called for accountability.
CNN’s Scott Jennings and Fox News’ Harris Faulkner are in hot water after airing a deceptively edited montage of popular leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.
According to Status, Piker and his legal team are preparing a defamation suit against Jennings and Salem Media, the company behind the conservative commentator’s nationally syndicated radio show. The lawsuit could also include Fox News, where Faulkner cited the same misleading compilation on air.
“This kind of defamation is completely unacceptable,” Piker told the outlet. “It’s exactly how normal people perceive mainstream media to operate, and it’s a real crisis of credibility.”
Last Tuesday (August 11), Jennings played the spliced-together clips on his radio show, saying, “Now [Abdul] El-Sayed’s [Michigan Democratic Senate nominee] best friend is out there calling for Black voters to be lynched.”
The video includes a clip of Piker saying, “I don’t give a f*** what Black people care about” and mentioning going “back to a better time when lynchings were happening.”
However, an investigation by Snopes found that the video is misleading, explaining that it is “heavily edited and presents Piker’s spoken words without full context, and in some cases out of order… to twist their original import.”
“A full review of Piker’s unedited remarks confirms Jennings falsely claimed Piker said he was in favor of bringing back lynchings,” Snopes added. “In the original stream, Piker’s remarks on lynchings were sarcastic reactions to a user’s chat comment and opinions expressed by someone else in a separate video.”
After airing the video on his radio show, Jennings said: “Beneath all the smiles and dancing videos, there’s nothing but hate and violence in the heart of these communists.” He also pushed the same message on social media, telling his followers to “listen for yourself.”
Piker told Status that the lawsuit “seems unavoidable,” saying, “I think someone has to push back against it at some point.” He also referred to Jennings as a “liar” and a “hatchet man” who is angling for a future role in the Trump administration or GOP. Jennings has recently been linked to the White House press secretary position.
“In Trump 2.0, we now traffic in lies all the time,” Piker continued, adding that he doesn’t understand why CNN puts Jennings on the air. Jennings is a regular panelist on CNN NewsNight and appears across various shows on the news network.
Piker added, “Just because the Republicans are trafficking in lies with regular frequency doesn’t mean that you can’t uphold some kind of editorial standard. CNN can put whoever they want to on a panel at the end of the day, but it just signals to me, and I think a lot of other people, that some of their panelists are just going to be liars.”