Response to Sean Hannity's 30-minute attack on Media Matters
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
Media Matters President Angelo Carusone released the following statement after Sean Hannity devoted the majority of his Fox News show to attacking Media Matters and defending his past coverage undermining the reports of sexual misconduct against Roy Moore:
Don’t be fooled by Hannity’s meandering obfuscation. He said a lot of flattering things tonight about Keurig in an attempt to undo some of the destruction he recklessly caused over the weekend. Despite all those words, he never said that Keurig will be advertising on his show again. That’s because they won’t be.
While Hannity and his supporters were busy today smashing coffee makers, six more advertisers either removed their ads from Hannity’s show or confirmed that they will not run ads on Hannity’s show going forward.
Over the past few days, whether by running interference for a politician he endorsed who was sexually preying on kids or by maligning women that speak out about sexual abuse and harassment or by ginning up a massive boycott against a company that simply didn’t want to continue buying ads on his show, Hannity provided the clearest illustrations yet that his volatility is bad for business.
That’s why companies are leaving his show and why they’ll continue to leave his show.
As for the rest of Hannity’s claims, Carusone added:
There were flat out demonstrable falsehoods, like claiming Media Matters uses bots to contact advertisers (we don’t) or that we took him out of context (we didn’t).
There was revisionism and lies, like his claim that he does not support boycotts (Hannity actually egged on the right-wing Keurig smashing campaign) or his pretending that he did not spend two days maligning and undermining the reports of women that spoke out against Roy Moore (he did and he also spent quite a bit of time before that assisting Bill O’Reilly in doing the same against the women that spoke out against him).
The advertisers that made it know that their ads are being excluded from Hannity’s show are: Conagra (advertising as Hebrew National, ReddiWip, and Marie Callender’s), HelloFresh, Hubble Contacts, UNTUCKit, Volvo, and the Society for Human Resource Management. UNTUCKit told Business Insider that they “have not advertised on Hannity for several weeks, although unrelated to the controversy surrounding his interview with Roy Moore” and that they "do not have any plans to revisit this decision.”
Media Matters has urged Hannity’s advertisers to reconsider financially supporting his lies and extremism and warned that his volatility makes him a business risk.
Those six companies that removed ads from his show today join companies like Keurig and Eloquii, which confirmed that they removed ads from Hannity’s show over the weekend, as well as Cadillac and E-Trade, which removed ads from Hannity’s show weeks ago.
Hannity’s advertiser losses from the late summer are part of the reason Fox News’ ad revenue dropped a whopping 17 percent in September 2017 as compared to September 2016, while CNN’s dipped 1 percent and MSNBC’s increased 2 percent.
HERE are Sean Hannity's advertisers.
UPDATE: This post has been updated with new advertiser information.