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The Pandemic of Anti-Hannity Misinformation from the University of Chicago Study

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute has issued a study titled: “Misinformation During a Pandemic.” The authors are Leonardo Bursztyn, Aakaash Rao, Christopher Roth, and David Yanagizawa-Drott, find it here

The Abstract of the “study” begins by saying this: “We study the effects of news coverage of the novel coronavirus by the two most widely-viewed cable news shows in the United States — Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight, both on Fox News — on viewers’ behavior and downstream health outcomes.”

Fair enough. But what happens when, in fact, the study itself is filled with reckless misstatements and omissions of fact that can only be seen as making the study nothing more than a reckless use of University resources to feed a false, propagandized and heavily politicized attack on the liberal bête noire that is Fox News and its popular nighttime commentators, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson?

So let’s go through this “study” and take a look.

The introduction opens by saying this:

“Efforts to contain a pandemic depend crucially on citizens holding accurate beliefs.”

Right. So let’s use the UC Study’s standard of citizens being told accurate information so that they can hold “accurate beliefs.”

1. UC Study says: “Hannity originally dismissed the risks associated with the virus before gradually adjusting his position starting late February.”

Fact: False. On January 24 Hannity said this of the virus in China: “They are closing movie theaters, there are only two cases in the U.S., I don’t want to alarm anybody but it seems like maybe they didn’t tell the world the truth which concerns me.”

On January 27, Hannity interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci and said this to Dr. Fauci: “I feel China reacted too slowly.” And asked: “Have we gotten it tied down?” Dr. Fauci replied: “It’s a low risk but the situation in China is very, very mobile in the sense that it’s evolving. It’s not a static situation. It could get much worse.”

Answer to UC: For Hannity to say on January 24th that he didn’t want to “alarm anybody but it seems like maybe they didn’t tell the world the truth which concerns me” and then three days later on the 27th say: “I feel China reacted too slowly?” This is not saying he “dismissed the risks associated with the virus.” Clearly he did not dismiss the risks, saying specifically that “I feel China reacted too slowly.” Too slowly to what? The risks of the virus. Mention of this in the “Study” Introduction? None.

Also, there is no mention of this headline from the far Left Media Matters from January 27th:

“Fox News fearmongers about coronavirus with dubiously sourced viral video”

Got that? All the way back on January 27th Fox was being accused of being a fearmonger because it publicized the virus in China. This is the exact opposite of what the “Study” is trying to suggest.

2. UC Study says: “Furthermore, the results suggest that in mid-March, after Hannity’s shift in tone…”

Fact: False. Again, Hannity was talking about his “alarm” at the virus on January 24th, and said “China reacted too slowly”:…on January 27. There was no “Hannity shift in tone”  in mid-March. This is a flat-out falsehood.

3.. UC Study says: “We provide additional evidence consistent with misinformation being an important mechanism driving the effects in the data.” Right from the beginning of this study, misinformation, as shown above, is being reported by – the supposedly scientific “Study.” There is zero reference to the misinformation purveyed by the Study itself.

4. UC Study says: “While our findings cannot yet speak to long-term effects, they indicate that provision of misinformation in the early stages of a pandemic can have important consequences for how a disease ultimately affects the population.” What is true here is that by providing a study filled with documented falsehoods there are important consequences for how deliberate misinformation – propaganda – does indeed have important consequences for truth and facts and how the lack of truth and facts is itself a disease that “ultimately affects the population.” Indeed, the study itself has been picked up and cited by anti-Fox, Hannity and Carlson hating left-wing media outlets like Vox.

5. UC Study says: “Efforts to contain a pandemic depend crucially on citizens holding accurate beliefs.” True. The problem is that before the Study is barely into its introduction it has already misinformed readers five different times with quite deliberate misinformation, as documented above. Citizens have been given deliberately false information on Hannity, Carlson, and Fox. Therefore, how can they be expected to have “accurate beliefs” on what they are learning from the non-Fox media or this “study” during the pandemic?

6. UC Study says: “In particular, Fox News, the most-watched cable network in the United States, has faced widespread criticism for spreading misinformation about the pandemic.” The study footnotes this sentence, and the footnote reads in its entirety, this way:

“See, for example, “Fox News has succeeded – in misinforming millions of Americans.” The Washington Post, April 1, 2020; “Fox’s Fake News Contagion.” The New York Times, March 31, 2020. Relatedly, a group of over seventy journalism professors wrote an open letter highlighting the danger of misinformation spread by Fox News: “Rupert Murdoch, Fox News’ COVID-19 misinformation is a danger to public health,” The Guardian, April 9, 2020. Fox News is currently being sued by the Washington League for Transparency and Ethics, which alleges that the network intentionally misled people about the threat posed by the coronavirus and thus facilitated its spread.”

The sly – and clearly deliberate – misinformation boggles the mind. The sources cited by the Study are The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian.

All three are hot-house ideological opponents of Hannity, Carlson, and Fox News. The footnote states:

“Relatedly, a group of over seventy journalism professors wrote an open letter highlighting the danger of misinformation spread by Fox News..”

In fact, totally unmentioned is that this group of “journalism professors” were led by longtime Leftist activist and Columbia Professor Todd Gitlin. As I reported here at The American Spectator in The Left’s War on Fox News: Using the coronavirus to silence a popular network and its hosts.

And the reference to “the Washington League for Transparency and Ethics” contains no reference that this is also a left-wing activist group. The Daily Beast reported this of a board member for the group, Arthur West: “West, 59, said he has been arrested numerous times in protest and civil-disobedience incidents, but claimed the rewards of successful lawsuits have allowed him to afford a lovely house in Olympia, Wash., overlooking Puget Sound and a fleet of pricey sports cars. He insisted this latest litigation against Fox is not a public-relations stunt.”

In other words? When the UC study says this: “In particular, Fox News, the most-watched cable network in the United States, has faced widespread criticism for spreading misinformation about the pandemic” it never says that the UC Study has used 100% of sources who are longtime Fox opponents if not longtime Leftist activists. Thus deliberately misinforming readers.

Fox News

7. UC Study says: “We then turn to the effects on the pandemic, examining disease trajectories across counties. We first show that, controlling for a rich set of county-level demographics (including the local market share of Fox News), greater local viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is associated with a greater number of COVID-19 cases starting in early March and a greater number of deaths resulting from COVID-19 starting in mid-March.”

Notice this phrase, bold print for emphasis supplied: “We first show that, controlling for a rich set of county-level demographics….”

As demonstrated repeatedly, if the study isn’t “controlling” for Left-wing bias – which it clearly has not done – then any other controlling for any other factor, demographics, in this case, is on the face of it bogus, tainted information designed specifically to reach an anti-Hannity, anti-Carlson, anti-Fox result.

All of this bias and erroneous or deceptively omitted but crucially necessary information above is just from the “Introduction.” Start into the rest of the “study” and one finds gems like this in a section labeled “Qualitative evidence: Carlson vs. Hannity.” Here is the opening sentence, repeating exactly the same mistake made in the Introduction. The sentence reads, with bold print supplied for emphasis, this:

Several reputable media outlets have criticized Fox News’ coverage of the novel coronavirus, claiming that the network, and in particular Sean Hannity misled viewers about the dangers the virus posed.”

And but of course, one checks to see in the supplied footnote just who these “Several reputable media outlets” are and the reader finds this familiar posting:

“7.  See, for example, ‘Fox News has succeeded – in misinforming millions of Americans.’ The Washington Post, April 1, 2020; ‘Fox’s Fake News Contagion.’ The New York Times, March 31, 2020. Moreover, a group of over 70 journalism professors have signed an open letter highlighting the danger of misinformation spread by Fox News: ‘Rupert Murdoch, Fox News’ COVID-19 misinformation is a danger to public health.’ The Guardian, April 9, 2020.”

In other words, once again the cite for this mention of “several reputable media outlets” are to sources that are all far-left wing ideological opponents of Fox, Hannity, Carlson and for that matter longtime opponents of conservative media in general.

That’s enough. More than plenty, in fact, to understand what this “Study” is really all about. But let’s end with the first and last sentence of the UC Study’s “Conclusion.” Bold print is supplied here for emphasis:

First Sentence: “Examining the effects of misinformation is particularly important during a pandemic given the large externalities involved and the significant consequences of misinformed behavior for individuals’ health and for the health care system as a whole.”

Last Sentence: “Still, our findings indicate that provision of misinformation in the early stages of a pandemic can have important consequences for health outcomes.”

One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the utter self – unawareness of the authors of this study. They have written a study chock-a-block with misinformation, disinformation, and an outright blackout of facts. Which, if they are correct about health incomes being affected by “misinformation” is a real disservice to their own objective.

All of this “Study” is clearly designed with one purpose in mind. That would be a political hit job on Hannity, Carlson, and Fox disguised – poorly disguised – as an impartial “just the facts” scientific study.

And like clockwork? Here is the headline at the far-left Vox:

Disturbing new study suggests Sean Hannity’s show helped spread the coronavirus

Sophisticated new research links Hannity’s coronavirus misinformation to “a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

But alas for Vox, not only is there no sophistication in this study that is filled with massive amounts of politically skewed misinformation, Vox doesn’t mention in this story about the UC study that there was this now-deleted tweet from Vox itself back there in January 31st – a full week after Hannity said this: “I don’t want to alarm anybody but it seems like maybe they didn’t tell the world the truth which concerns me.” Tweeted the Voxers:

“Is this [coronavirus] going to be a deadly pandemic? No.”

Maybe UC could study that.

You can’t make it up.

Unless, of course, you do and pretend the results are a scientific “study.”

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