- Trump rejects his own administration’s advice on masks
- How science finally caught up with Trump’s playbook
- Unloved by progressives, Andrew Cuomo has the spotlight now
- Live global updates
- See all our coronavirus coverage
- Support the Guardian’s independent journalism. Make a contribution
Updated
08:25
US has 278,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19
11:20
10:47
10:33
10:20
10:06
09:43
Fox News host Sean Hannity hit back against intense criticism of the conservative network’s coronavirus coverage, even claiming in a new interview that he was ahead of most media in taking Covid-19 seriously.
Hannity’s statements to Newsweek were in response to a 1 April open letter signed by 74 journalism professors that lambasted Fox News for allegedly spreading “misinformation” about the outbreak. The professors’ missive directly cited Hannity’s statement that the Democrats and media overplayed coronavirus to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”
Their letter came several days before a report in The Daily Beast that Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan were bracing for lawsuits over Fox News’s coronavirus coverage.
Asked about his statement that Democrats and the media were using Covid-19 “to bludgeon Trump,” Hannity responded, “Many of them did.”
“We are in the middle of the huge pandemic and where’s the Democrat saying, ‘You know, I didn’t agree with the travel ban at the time, but it was the right decision.’ Politics trumps truth in their world.”
“It’s the same Democrats, media mob and liberal professors who are so lazy they won’t even look at what I’ve said about the virus. They just go with their narrative. I never called it a ‘hoax,’” Hannity said when subsequently asked about his “hoax” comment. “I said it was a hoax for them to be using it as a bludgeon on Trump. And they are. Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are talking about an investigation. Now? In the middle of a pandemic?”
Hannity also said “Go to my website and you’ll see irrefutable evidence that I have taken this seriously way before most in the media did. I warned in January that it was dangerous because it was highly contagious, but some people were asymptomatic, so it would spread quickly.”
The letter, addressed to both Murdoch and his son, claimed “viewers of Fox News, including the president of the United States, have been regularly subjected to misinformation relayed by the network – false statements downplaying the prevalence of Covid-19 and its harms…”
The professors further claimed that Fox News offered “misleading recommendations of activities that people should undertake to protect themselves and others, including casual recommendations of untested drugs; false assessments of the value of measures urged upon the public by their elected political leadership and public health authorities.”
Mediaite pointed out that while Fox News has taken some actions that seemingly view coronavirus more seriously – with Hannity and other talking heads such as Tucker Carlson appearing in a PSA, for example – there have still been questionable moments.
On Friday night, Carlson criticized infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci’s call for a national stay-at-home mandate.
“More than 10 million Americans have already lost their jobs. Imagine another year of this. That would be national suicide, and yet, that is what Anthony Fauci is suggesting, at least,” Carlson said. “Now, we’re not suggesting that Fauci wants to hurt America. We don’t think he does, he seems like a very decent man. But Fauci is not an economist or for that matter someone who fears being unemployed himself. Like most of the people around him.”
Updated
09:11
08:52
08:25
US has 278,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19
Source: Elections - theguardian.com