Fire Hannity Effort Intensifies
Fire Hannity Effort Intensifies
By Alexander Nazaryan On 8/3/17 at 3:35 PM
Efforts to get Fox News to fire commentator Sean Hannity have intensified in recent days, amid allegations that the network collaborated with the White House in promulgating a conspiracy theory that sought to cast blame on Democratic operatives for the 2016 murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, who was killed while walking home from a bar in Washington, D.C.
A lawsuit filed by private investigator Rod Wheeler alleges that Fox News and the Trump administration effectively used him to legitimate the theory that Rich was killed for providing DNC emails to WikiLeaks. In his complaint, Wheeler says the intended effect was to ameliorate the growing pressure of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.
Hannity used his prime-time program to push the Rich conspiracy theory, even as no evidence materialized that the slain 24-year-old had contact with WikiLeaks. At the time, the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America launched an online campaign to pressure advertisers into dropping sponsorship of Hannity’s program. A similar campaign against Hannity’s prime-time colleague Bill O’Reilly proved successful earlier this year, leading at least in part to his departure from the network.
The rising prominence of the site Fire Hannity suggests a redoubling of those efforts—this time independent of Media Matters, though using similar tactics. The site was founded by the Democratic Coalition, whose executive director, Nate Lerner, on Thursday told me flatly of Hannity’s coverage of the Rich murder, “I absolutely believe he knowingly used false info and quotes to enhance his story.”
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