For a while now, Sean Hannity has been pushing a conspiracy theory that DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered by the Democrats as revenge for leaking their emails to WikiLeaks. To be fair, the police have yet to solve the Seth Rich murder case, and it does seem highly coincidental that the guy who leaked some shady political documents would be inexplicably murdered right afterwards, so maybe, right?
Anyway, nothing has been proven and the police say that the unsolved murder of Rich is simply down to a failed robbery turned sour. But nothing has been proven on that end either.
Anyway, Hannity had no right to peddle this conspiracy theory, since Seth Rich has a family who are still very much alive and grieving the man’s untimely death, and he claims to be a journalist and conspiracy theories aren’t news (but guys pushing conspiracy theories and passing it off as news is news, so I’m fine).
Hannity promised to stop pushing his theory
This is not just the opinion of one Trump-loving man (Hannity). Fox News itself also published an article suggesting that Rich’s murder was an organised hit ordered by Democratic political forces in order to wreak vengeance against the email-leaking SOB. Shortly thereafter (well, a few days later, actually, after the sh*t went down), Fox News took the article down and tried to justify it, saying that it had originally not been “subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require from all our reporting.” Oh, okay.
It wasn’t scrutinised enough, I see.
Hannity has promised that “out of respect for the family’s wishes,” he would stop peddling the story on his show. But that seemed like he was just required to say it by his bosses to avoid going the Bill O’Reilly route and get himself fired, because he used terms like “for now” and “at this time,” all the journalistic bullsh*t we use so that he won’t get sued when he starts peddling it again tomorrow.
He pledged to his viewers that he was “not going to stop doing (his) job” and “not going to stop trying to find the truth.”
So, what came before was meaningless and he’ll keep looking into the Seth Rich murder until he can prove he’s right (and get himself fired from FNC in the process, probably). After the show, Hannity tweeted: “Ok TO BE CLEAR, I am closer to the TRUTH than ever.” He told his followers to “stay tuned” as he was “not only...not stopping,” but rather “working harder” to prove the conspiracy to be true.
Advertisers are, naturally, pulling out
MediaMatters put out a list of Hannity’s advertisers in response to his controversial theorising about the real murder of a real man who has a real family. Cars.com pulled out its advertising spots on Hannity’s show, although not its spots across FNC as a whole. They released a statement saying that their marketing strategies are “designed to reach as many consumers as possible across a wide spectrum of media channels,” which means they don’t necessarily “agree or disagree, or support or oppose, the content,” which they have no “influence” over, they say.
Peloton are also pulling their advertising from Hannity’s show, although they’ve announced that it won’t take effect for “a few days.” Leesa Sleep is also pulling its ads from his show.
Hannity was furious at MediaMatters for doing this, accusing them of “liberal fascism,” and “targeting my advertisers to silence my voice” in an attempt “to get me fired.” He also complained that they didn’t do the same to “Real Time with Bill Maher” on HBO (which has no advertisers) and “Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Well, see, Colbert talks about things that are true.
