How Conservatives Awoke to the Dangers of Sean Hannity

[babylonsister]

How Conservatives Awoke to the Dangers of Sean Hannity

The Fox News host is under attack as never before because many Americans are now forced to take what he says seriously for the first time.
Reuters / Mike Segar

Conor Friedersdorf
7:34 AM ET Politics

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What’s different today are the growing number of people on the right doing what they’ve seldom if ever done before: taking Hannity and his ilk seriously enough to criticize them.

snip//

For most of the 15 years that I occasionally dipped into his syndicated radio show and his Fox News programs, I seldom wrote about his oeuvre, even as I published right-leaning criticism of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Ann Coulter. He seemed less hateful than they were; and while he frequently misinformed his audience, he was somehow less indecent—he mostly didn’t seem to be speaking in bad faith, if only because he didn’t know any better than the simplistic boilerplate he regurgitated. The misinformation that he spread was occasionally worth refuting, even as there always seemed to be more malign personalities to take on directly.

Today, two things have changed. Most obviously, Hannity’s coverage of the DNC staffer’s murder has been prominent and appalling. David French put it well at National Review:

It’s a dramatic and lurid misdirection, one that even the writers of House of Cards would find far-fetched, and it has the benefit of tricking gullible Trump supporters into further mistrusting the media. After all, the real story is over at Gateway Pundit or at Breitbart or Drudge, or on Fox News at 10:00 p.m. The true facts are known only to those who can perceive the pure evil of the Clintons, the deep state, and the rest of the establishment media.

Every time Hannity and his allies hyped this story, they disrespected their conservative audience, they hurt a grieving family, and they violated their own professional obligations to carefully check facts rather than engage in wild speculation. Decent people fell for this con. Decent people even spread it online. It’s time for Hannity and his allies to stand down, permanently, and relegate this story to the place where it belongs — right next to UFO documentaries, flat-earth videos, and “proof” that NASA faked the moon landing.

But again, this is hardly the first time that Hannity has disrespected his conservative audience by failing to carefully check facts and engaging in wild speculation, thresholds that never used to trigger criticism of right-wing commentators in National Review.

The more important factor is the realization that right-wing infotainment’s flaws matter. Some on the right are explicitly acknowledging their change in attitude. Here’s neoconservative writer Max Boot tracing the arc of his attitudes toward Fox News:

Although Ailes had been pushed out of Fox News by the time of his death due to a raft of sexual harassment scandals and had no hand in the latest Seth Rich hoax, this is nevertheless the unfortunate culmination of his efforts to create an alternative news source. It was an ambition that I and many other conservatives sympathized with when Fox News went on the air in 1996. We had long chafed under what we viewed as the stifling liberal orthodoxy propagated by the major broadcast and print outlets. While not exactly “fair and balanced” — Ailes always meant the channel’s slogan to be taken with a wink and a nod — Fox was supposed to provide some ideological balance within the larger media universe. That was a laudable ambition, but what Fox has become is far from laudable.

Not only is it a toxic workplace where the harassment of women is rampant; it is also a no-fact zone. The Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact found that nearly 60 percent of the statements it checked on Fox News were either mostly or entirely false. Another 19 percent were only half true. Only Fox News viewers are likely to believe that climate change is a hoax, that there is a “war on Christmas,” that Obamacare would create “death panels,” that there is an epidemic of crime committed by immigrants (they actually have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans), that President Barack Obama forged his birth certificate and wiretapped Trump with the aid of Britain’s signals intelligence agency, and that the accusations bedeviling Trump are a product of “Russophobia.” FNC might as well stand for Fake News Channel, and its myths have had a pernicious, indeed debilitating, effect on U.S. politics.

more...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/sean-hannity/528144/

[Proud Liberal Dem]

1. I've always disliked Hannity and thought him equally atrocious

Surprised that it's taken this long for people to catch on to how bad he is. I mean, his icons are Rush Limbaugh and Oliver North.

[NewJeffCT]

10. I agree - Hannity has been just as bad for a long time

He's the one that raised the "gotcha" question to new and reprehensible levels. While O'Reilly may have been horrible and a worse person off camera, he would at least sometimes admit he was wrong - maybe once or twice per year. I don't remember Hannity ever admitting he was wrong. (O'Reilly admitting he was wrong on Shirley Sherrod - the woman that was fired after the video of her saying she disliked white people, only for it to later come out that it was actually an inspiring story of how she overcame her dislike when she realized that poor white people often have things in common with poor black people...)

[Proud Liberal Dem]

21. I've never heard Sean issue a correction, retraction

I'm sort of amazed that Alan Colmes (RIP) willingly put up with him for so many years when they were on Fox together. I'm surprised that a right-winger has (finally) been called out on his BS when the right-wing spent years making political mileage on the Clinton murder conspiracy theories, wild Benghazi stories (that also involved the deaths of Americans being laid at Hillary Clinton's feet) and Republicans routinely lie about their Democratic opponents and make up all kinds of wild stories that they never retract, let alone apologize for. Better late than never I guess?

[NewJeffCT]

22. I think with Alan Colmes

who seemed like a nice guy - they probably purposely chose him because he's kind of laid back and not assertive most of the time. So, he wouldn't interrupt Hannity and his personality would not outshine the "star" (It was originally Sean Hannity and "unnamed liberal" until they found Colmes to fill the chair)

[underpants]

2. ¿ professional obligations to carefully check facts rather than engage in wild speculation

professional obligations to carefully check facts rather than engage in wild speculation?

This writer doesn't seem to be aware of the purpose or history of right wing media.

[NewJeffCT]

12. Maybe he's having flashbacks

to the days when you could have a William F Buckley or a younger George Will on air and they could reasonably debate a Democrat/liberal on the issues.

[janx]

13. Indeed.

He's relatively young, but as someone who is clearly a critic of journalism, he could have at least done his homework.

[EL34x4]

3. Hannity's target audience aren't conservatives, they're Trump voters.

I know all of us here on DU think these people are one in the same but they're not. Sean Hannity went all in for Trump early on. They're eating up the Seth Rich conspiracy stuff. They think Obama was born in Kenya and that Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster.

These aren't the people who read David French at the National Review, a publication they've been boycotting since the February 15, 2016 issue.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. Even that is a shrinking audience. . . . nt

[Initech]

4. We've been warning about how toxic Hannity is for some time.

And we're sick of Fox News' lies, bullshit, and liberal bashing. Time to start holding them accountable for their actions.

[JHB]

5. Conor, Conor, Conor. Hannity isn't "disrespect(ing) his conservative audience". He's playing to it.

You Built This.

Conservatives welcomed in the people Hannity plays to decades ago, encouraged them to identify as 'conservatives'. Anything and everything was permitted to break apart the Democrats' coalition and keep it broken.

THEY are the real conservative movement now, and you National Review guys are the pansy-ass slackers too chicken and do-nothing-elitist follow through on the very things you said needed to be done.

Extremism in defense of "liberty" is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of "justice" is no virtue, and all that.

People tried to warn you about the dangers of what you conservatives were doing, but you ignored them. Wait, 'ignored' is the wrong word. A phrase would be better: "too busy gleefully stomping on them to listen to". In other words, liberals and Democrats.

Look in the mirror, Conor. Hannity was one of your power tools, and you're the one who thought handling them while drunk and greasy-handed was a good idea. Can we stop holding your beer now?

[janx]

11. . . .

I couldn't have said it better myself (I type as I notice Blinded by the Right still sitting on my bookshelf).

[calimary]

17. Amen! YOU Built This. YOUR SIDE birthed and midwifed this.

This is all on YOUR tab and on YOUR ledger.

As for that-guy-whose-name-rhymes-with-Vanity, he once hyped himself as "the most talked-about talk show host in college radio."

Indeed? Well, I spent FOUR YEARS in college radio - actually more than that because after I graduated, I kept up my involvement with my college station, including on the air. I was fairly well wired-in on the radio biz all over the country, including the college radio scene, for a long time. All formats. And I never heard of the guy.

[JHB]

18. It also rhymes with "inanity"...

And now that we have a new Sean (spicy!), it might make it easier to distinguish between them by using Vanity Inannity.

[Quixote1818]

6. I always hated him but when he called Terry Schievo's husband an attempted murderer any tiny shred

Last edited Tue May 30, 2017, 03:53 PM - Edit history (1)

of respect I still had evaporated in an epic manor. He is pure evil and will ruin anyone's life just for ratings. I fucking hate him with a passion!

[DK504]

7. Ugh....when did FUX ever check facts?

[mwooldri]

8. And that's why people who don't watch the news...

... are more informed than those who only watch Fox News Channel. (Want to keep separate the local Fox broadcast channel affiliates - some of which do proper legitimate fact based reporting).

[pbmus]

14. INSANITY Hannity...

[TheBlackAdder]

15. They awoke? Did I miss something?

[bucolic_frolic]

16. insHannity will just morph and run for office

the ego must be stroked

[onlyadream]

19. The article states that Grandpa Trump watches 5 hours of Fox "News" a day.

How is that possible? Most people I know who work full-time are lucky if they get in two hours a day.

[Scurrilous]

20. K&R

[Gothmog]

23. Hannity is an idiot