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.
At the unlikely climax of his career, Hannity’s job is under attack because the most powerful man in the world trusts his words in a way no similarly powerful man ever has––and with that great responsibility, with that opportunity to inform the president about any matter in the world, Hannity indulges in half-baked conspiracies.
Source: How Conservatives Awoke to the Dangers of Sean Hannity – The Atlantic, by Conor Friedersdorf
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. … 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.
Source: The Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory Is Shameful Nonsense | National Review, by David French
The network I once respected as a necessary antidote to liberal media now peddles craven lies and Russian disinformation.
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. … FNC might as well stand for Fake News Channel, and its myths have had a pernicious, indeed debilitating, effect on U.S. politics.
Source: The Seth Rich ‘Scandal’ Shows That Fox News Is Morally Bankrupt | Foreign Policy, by Max Boot