Sean Hannity wants an apology and retraction from the New York Times over recent pieces in the paper about his coronavirus coverage and commentary.

One of the pieces in question, from columnist Ginia Bellafante, notes how bar owner Joe Joyce went on a cruise before testing positive for the coronavirus. It also notes how he was a Fox News viewer. As of this posting, the report says:

“He watched Fox, and believed it was under control,’’ Kristen told me.

Early in March Sean Hannity went on air proclaiming that he didn’t like the way that the American people were getting scared “unnecessarily.’’ He saw it all, he said, “as like, let’s bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”

Eventually, Fox changed course and took the virus more seriously, but the Joyces were long gone by then. A spokeswoman for Fox News said that Mr. Hannity made statements taking the spread of coronavirus seriously early on, and that his comment about the public being scared by the coverage happened after the Joyces had left on their cruise.

At the time Hannity blasted the Times over the report, and now he is formally demanding a retraction and an apology from the paper over that and two other recent pieces referencing his coronavirus commentary.

Per Fox News:

Hannity’s legal team on Monday fired off a detailed letter to the newspaper over three separate pieces by columnist Ginia Bellafante, contributing writer Kara Swisher and media columnist Ben Smith which they said all showed “an outrageous disregard for the truth.” The letter demanded action within 24 hours.

“Failure to do so will leave Mr. Hannity with no alternative but to consider instituting immediate legal proceedings against you,” it stated.

The Times responded to the letter with a statement saying, “We’ve reported fairly and accurately on Mr. Hannity and there is no basis for a retraction or an apology.”

On the air tonight, Hannity went on a tear against the lacking media coverage of Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden before bringing up the Times.

“The same people now accusing the president, even yours truly pretty much of murder, killing people who passed away from the coronavirus, when nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “What they wrote was false, it is provably false, and rather than do the ethical, honest, ‘journalistic’ thing which would be correct and that’s to retract and apologize, they secretly stealth edited their mistake. To me, an admission of guilt. The stealth addition rendered their phony headline false.”

“There is no lie the mob and the media won’t tell, no slander they won’t spread, no hoax to insane to pass off as actual news. When I said journalism is dead and buried in 2007, I thought I was right. I had no idea how right I was,” he said.

You can watch above, via Fox News.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2xVeJHJ