Hannity and Trump
Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 10:19 pm
Apparently, Hannity and President Trump really like to talk to each other right before bedtime.
The call to the White House comes after ten o’clock most weeknights, when Hannity is over. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Sean Hannity broadcasts live at 9 p.m. on Fox News, usually from Studio J in midtown, where the network is headquartered, but sometimes from a remote studio on Long Island, where he was raised and now lives.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... calls.html
And Hannity needs to be honest with his close relationship with President Trump.
Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator and talk-radio host, is perfectly entitled to support President Donald Trump, to defend Trump’s allies, and to attack Trump’s enemies. But his audience deserves the truth about his relationship to this presidency.
He has yet to level with them.
Oh, viewers know that Hannity is a right-wing populist who calls himself a conservative and votes Republican. No one is under the impression that he is “fair and balanced,” and the most discerning can calibrate their viewing experience accordingly. But most viewers understandably assumed that Hannity’s coverage of Trump is no different than his commentary on other elected GOP officials he has supported.
That isn’t so. Hannity is not an outside observer who likes what he sees in the Trump White House and shares that perspective. He is a participant in this presidency, one who still hasn’t ever fully disclosed how he affects and is affected by the actions Trump takes.
That is not to say that he should shut up. It is to say that he owes his viewers enough context to make informed judgments about his biggest biases, blind spots, conflicts of interest, and how they may affect his words.
There is a long history of ideologically aligned pundits offering advice to elected officials with whom they agree. It would be difficult to determine the exact line where such behavior crosses over into the assumption of a fundamentally different role that confers an obligation to alert the public that something has changed. But Hannity’s case isn’t even a close call.
A close call would be if the Fox host occasionally had friendly private conversations with Trump, once attended a private dinner at the White House, and casually talked with Donald Trump Jr. about how they should go rhino hunting, adding that for safety’s sake they had better not invite Dick Cheney. Knowing all that would not cause me to adjust how I assess Hannity’s show.
As Rush Limbaugh put it, everybody knows that Hannity “is eager for Donald Trump to succeed, just like over half of the country is.” (Well, less than half the country, but still.)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatl ... le/560000/
The call to the White House comes after ten o’clock most weeknights, when Hannity is over. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Sean Hannity broadcasts live at 9 p.m. on Fox News, usually from Studio J in midtown, where the network is headquartered, but sometimes from a remote studio on Long Island, where he was raised and now lives.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... calls.html
And Hannity needs to be honest with his close relationship with President Trump.
Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator and talk-radio host, is perfectly entitled to support President Donald Trump, to defend Trump’s allies, and to attack Trump’s enemies. But his audience deserves the truth about his relationship to this presidency.
He has yet to level with them.
Oh, viewers know that Hannity is a right-wing populist who calls himself a conservative and votes Republican. No one is under the impression that he is “fair and balanced,” and the most discerning can calibrate their viewing experience accordingly. But most viewers understandably assumed that Hannity’s coverage of Trump is no different than his commentary on other elected GOP officials he has supported.
That isn’t so. Hannity is not an outside observer who likes what he sees in the Trump White House and shares that perspective. He is a participant in this presidency, one who still hasn’t ever fully disclosed how he affects and is affected by the actions Trump takes.
That is not to say that he should shut up. It is to say that he owes his viewers enough context to make informed judgments about his biggest biases, blind spots, conflicts of interest, and how they may affect his words.
There is a long history of ideologically aligned pundits offering advice to elected officials with whom they agree. It would be difficult to determine the exact line where such behavior crosses over into the assumption of a fundamentally different role that confers an obligation to alert the public that something has changed. But Hannity’s case isn’t even a close call.
A close call would be if the Fox host occasionally had friendly private conversations with Trump, once attended a private dinner at the White House, and casually talked with Donald Trump Jr. about how they should go rhino hunting, adding that for safety’s sake they had better not invite Dick Cheney. Knowing all that would not cause me to adjust how I assess Hannity’s show.
As Rush Limbaugh put it, everybody knows that Hannity “is eager for Donald Trump to succeed, just like over half of the country is.” (Well, less than half the country, but still.)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatl ... le/560000/
