Prime time host Hannity continues to create problems for real Fox News reporters. It is difficult to understand all of the fanfare over Fox News host Sean Hannity being outed as Donald Trump…
Prime time host Hannity continues to create problems for real Fox News reporters.
It is difficult to understand all of the fanfare over Fox News host Sean Hannity being outed as Donald Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen’s third client.
The way the cable news world exploded over the revelation, you would have thought that it was a journalist whose name was mentioned.
Sean Hannity has claimed he is not a journalist, but an entertainer, though he plays the same notes more often than a garage band musician with a three-string guitar. His three-hit repertoire consists of praising President Trump, demonizing Trump’s investigators and blasting Hillary Clinton as if Trump’s former opponent still had relevance.
Hannity tries to have it both ways, though, often speaking of information he received from sources, promoting “real” news that you won’t see on other media outlets and, of course, being featured on a network that has the word “news” in its name.
Hannity’s sin, judging from media commentary, is that he never revealed while he was interviewing Cohen and bashing the FBI search warrant that led to Monday’s courtroom drama that he had consulted Cohen. Hannity committed a breach of journalistic ethics, critics said, though the idea of having journalistic ethics and Hannity spoken in the same sentence is amusing.
The big question: If there was nothing to hide, why didn’t Hannity tell his audience that Cohen was his attorney?
Zurawik noted Hannity’s claim, both on his show and on Twitter, that Cohen had never represented him and that he had mostly talked with him about real estate.
The editorial indicated Hannity had already crossed the line many times, with this latest news merely adding to his list of ethical transgressions.
Hannity is way too compromised to compromise himself further. With each revelation, though, it’s clear that Hannity’s programming is driven more by personal ties and loyalties than by whatever principles he may retain at this point.
You could have said that you had asked him for advice or whatever. But I think it would have been much, much better had you disclosed that relationship.
Though Hannity disagreed with Dershowitz and brushed aside the attorney’s scolding, his entry- even in a peripheral fashion- as a player in the Trump investigations creates serious problems for Fox News.
Other programming during the afternoon and early evening hours is presented by the network’s news division and often offers information that is completely at odds with that presented during primetime.
If the Fox News Channel hopes to maintain any journalistic integrity, the way it handles Sean Hannity, both as it concerns his relationship with Michael Cohen and his regular mixture of Trump boosterism and right wing conspiracy theories, could provide a turning point.
As afternoon news anchor Shepard Smith, a critic of some of the things Hannity has promoted on his program said when the Hannity-Cohen story broke Monday, for Fox News this is the “elephant in the room.”
