FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Opinionated talk radio, which was always dominated by right-wing personalities, was born in 1960, and flourished in local markets under the Fairness Doctrine, which wasn’t jettisoned until 1987. By taking callers with contrasting views, talk radio was actually seen as comporting with the Fairness Doctrine.
With former CEO Roger Ailes and star anchor Bill O’Reilly gone, attention at Fox News Channel is shifting to Sean Hannity—the last of the channel’s big stars who have been with the network from the Clinton years to Trump.
Beck’s hire signaled to the network’s base and the country at large the direction Fox would take as a reaction to Obama’s election. Eight years later, after a very different election result, at a different moment for the country and the network, Fox is once again signaling its priorities to an incoming administration
It’s a problem when presidential candidates from a major political party are getting their information about the world from a news outlet that evidently can’t tell the difference between a sub-Onion hoax site and actual news.
Steve Emerson was far from alone on Fox News in advancing a xenophobic fantasy of European urban areas lost to Western civilization.
How Fox News covered the Ferguson grand jury announcement.
A Fox News military analyst is not afraid to talk about civilian deaths in Syria: He seems to want to see more of them.
The ease at which violent criminal tendencies can be attached to youth–particularly black youth–is a dangerous habit of media.
The journalists amazed by Mark Sanford’s comeback make the mistake of assuming that since the GOP spends so much time preaching “family values” and “social conservatism,” Republican pols who violate these preachments must pay a greater price than less moralistic Democrats.
To make the case that gun ownership was not just a right, but something akin to a sacrament, Hannity quoted George Washington: “‘Rifles and pistols are equally indispensable.’ ‘They deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.'” The quote is a hoax, and a well-known one.
Brian Stelter reports in the New York Times that Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are renewing their contracts…meaning that we’ll be enjoying–and paying for–their talents through the 2016 election season. Not many people around Fox wanted to speak on the record about the new deals, but Stelter granted anonymity to one Fox insider who was […]
Sean Hannity got his start in radio on UC Santa Barbara’s KCSB in the late 1980s, where he got in trouble for promoting homophobia and disinformation about HIV and AIDS. I wrote about this in a 2003 Extra! profile of the then-Fox News show Hannity & Colmes: After airing for less than a year, Hannity’s […]
Last night (6/6/11), Fox News host Sean Hannity was talking with WorldNetDaily‘s Joe Farah: FARAH: Charles Rangel is still in the House. Barney Frank is still in the House. Bill Clinton is getting awards. Gerry Studds got a standing ovation from House Democrats. This is a guy who had sex with a congressional page, correct? […]
When Fox News Channel was developing Sean Hannity’s TV show, it was known as Hannity & Liberal To Be Determined. That liberal turned out to be Alan Colmes, who would eventually leave the gig after doing his part by playing the Washington Generals to Hannity’s Harlem Globetrotters. It hardly mattered who sat in the “left” […]
Former Sean Hannity show regular Hal Turner recently was arrested for blogging that “we have enough bullets to put… down” those not heeding his “warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die.” While criminal prosecution most definitely is not the general solution for hateful commentary, the Hartford Courant‘s Edmund H. Mahony (6/25/09) reports […]
Reporting that “reactionary radio host and white supremacist Hal Turner was taken into custody Wednesday after remarks urging Catholics to ‘take up arms’ against two Connecticut lawmakers and a state ethics official over legislation… regarding the church,” independent news outlet Raw Story‘s John Byrne (6/4/09) deepens the story by recalling that “Turner used to be […]
Prefacing a Daily Show segment (3/4/09) with his version of current big-media reporting: “Recent opinion polls indicate that six weeks into Barack Obama’s administration, the American public thinks they approve of his performance–but it turns out they’re wrong,” Jon Stewart runs clips of celebrity news figures like Fox‘s Sean Hannity asking, “How did the market […]
Keeping tabs on the “Fair and Balanced” network, Mark Howard (News Corpse, 3/2/09) details how last year, prior to the election, Fox News was already fortifying its right flank. New multimillion dollar contracts were handed out to Roger Ailes, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. Hannity’s show shed the dead weight of alleged liberal Alan Colmes. […]
Sean Hannity is a great American. You can hear it every day on his national radio show, where the standard caller greeting to the host is, “Sean, you’re a great American!” The catchphrase is so well-known, it’s been commercialized! And who is more patriotic than Hannity, who uses his daily radio and Fox News Channel […]
You’re a politician who’s just been exposed for cheating on your spouse. Your political career is over, right? These days, that might depend on your politics—and your relationship with a certain right-wing cable news show. After revelations of an affair with an aide during the 2008 primaries, John Edwards’ career fell off the face of […]
