This has been long, long in coming.
Sean Hannity announced on his radio show on Monday that he had libel lawyers send a letter to The New York Times for the paper’s wildly irresponsible report on comments Sean made on his television show on March 9th. The essence: the “paper of record” accused Sean of making remarks on the Covid-19 virus that encouraged a viewer to take a cruise – a cruise in which the viewer contracted the virus and later died.
Left out of the story? The simple timeline that the trip taken by viewer Joe Joyce began on March 1st – and Hannity’s remarks in question on the virus didn’t take place until – wait for it – 8 days later on March 9th. In other words, The Times’ story was absolute fiction.
There will be plenty of time to watch this story unfold and see if The Times bellies up to the bar of journalistic responsibility and apologizes and retracts. But for now? The question is: How in the world did The Times and the rest of the media get in this position in the first place?
In other words, The Times’ story was absolute fiction.
As it happens I had a conversation with a notable someone about exactly what was on display in this Times story on Hannity – a conversation that took place, on the record, a full six years ago. That conversation was an on-the-record talk with then-private citizen Donald Trump. The subject of one of my questions was how, if he ran for president in 2016, would candidate Trump – and President Trump if he won – deal with a press that many Republicans felt routinely slandered their nominees for president – with the nominees not fighting back. Would he, I asked, fight back if he ran? Not to mention if he won.
My old fashioned tape recorder captured his answer for The American Spectator, an answer that comes to mind now as Hannity has announced his letter to The Times demanding an apology and retraction. Note: The reference in Trump’s response to Donald Sterling is to the then-headlining case of basketball’s Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, whose mistress had released a secretly recorded tape of Sterling making racist remarks. The story was the big news of the minute, with many – including Donald Trump – going after Sterling and attacking the remarks. Sterling later was forced to give up his interest in the Clippers. Trump said the following:
“Well, I see firsthand the dishonesty of the press, because probably nobody gets more press than I do. As an example, last week I was on a Fox program, and I very much lambasted Donald Sterling. And then at the very end, I said, “On top of which, he has the girlfriend from hell.” And the haters and the very dishonest reporters who have their own agenda, they didn’t cover what I said about Donald Sterling. They only took the girlfriend from hell and they said, “Oh he’s not blaming Donald Sterling. He’s defending Donald Sterling. He’s blaming the girlfriend.”
The press is extremely dishonest. Much of it. Some of it I have great respect for, and they’re great people and honorable people. But there’s a large segment of the press that’s more dishonest than anybody I’ve seen in business or anywhere else. And the one thing you have to do is you have to inform the public. The public has to know about the dishonesty of the press because they are really bad people and they don’t tell the truth and have no intention of telling the truth. And I know who they are and I would expose them 100 percent. And I will be doing that. I mean, as I go down the line, I enjoy exposing people for being frauds, and, you know, I would be definitely doing that. I think it’s important to know. Because a lot of the public, they think, oh, they read it in the newspaper, and therefore it must be true. Well, many of the things you read in the newspaper are absolutely false and really disgustingly false.”
Move ahead six years to this very day, and there is, in the Hannity letter, exactly the same point. The Times story on Hannity was indeed, to borrow from the 2014 Trump, “extremely dishonest.” Just as Trump said then, this Times story on Sean Hannity is the personification of Trump’s point that “many of the things you read in the newspaper are absolutely false and really disgustingly false.”
The real problem now? What was already a problem in 2014 is now in 2020 a media pandemic of flat out lies and vicious untruths, of which this New York Times story on Hannity is a prime example. The targets range from the President himself to Sean, his fellow Fox hosts, and Fox News itself, not to mention the world of talk radio and conservative media.
It is time, more than time, to hold the purveyors of this kind of “absolutely false and really disgustingly false” media garbage accountable.
Stay tuned. As the saying goes, you haven’t heard the last of this.
