slate - "Why Sean Hannity Won't Let Go of the Seth Rich Conspiracy" [View all]

[NRaleighLiberal]

With Trump flailing and viewers fleeing, it’s the alternate-reality distraction he desperately needs.

By Will Oremus

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/05/why_sean_hannity_can_t_let_go_of_the_seth_rich_conspiracy.html

For the past week, Fox News has been heavily promoting a conspiracy theory linking the unsolved 2016 murder of a young Democratic National Committee staffer to WikiLeaks’ publication of stolen DNC emails. The implication, first floated by WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange last year: that the 27-year-old Rich may have been killed in retribution for leaking those emails, and that authorities were colluding to keep it quiet.


The story resurfaced thanks to a May 16 report by local affiliate Fox 5 DC, in which a private investigator claimed to have “tangible evidence” that Rich had in fact been communicating with WikiLeaks. Fox News made it the top story on its website that same day. Within hours, that report had been debunked. Yet the story had made its way to FoxNews.com, and the network’s star primetime opinion host, Sean Hannity, went on to make the Seth Rich “murder mystery” one of his top segments night after night. Hannity repeatedly suggested that the mainstream media outlets who refused to cover the story were in on the cover-up. Meanwhile, Rich’s own family pleaded with him to find the “decency and kindness” to stop flogging the conspiracy theory.

On Tuesday, Fox News retracted its week-old story at last, deleting it from its website. (You can read an archived version of the piece here.) The network offered the following statement:

On May 16, a story was posted on the Fox News website on the investigation into the 2016 murder of DNC Staffer Seth Rich. The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting. Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed.
We will continue to investigate this story and will provide updates as warranted.
That was Fox News’ news department—the relatively sane wing of its operation—trying to salvage a shard of credibility after multiple reports Monday that its own staff were “embarrassed” and “disgusted” by Hannity’s crusade. (At least one other conservative outlet, the Daily Caller, also appeared to have taken down its original Rich story on Tuesday.)

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