Seven advertisers have now reportedly pulled their ads from Sean Hannity’s television program after the Fox News host continued to push a conspiracy theory about a slain Democratic National Committee staffer even though the victim’s family asked him to stop.
Hannity lost his first advertiser, Cars.com, on Wednesday. Others quickly followed suit, according to ThinkProgress, including Peloton, Leesa Sleep, Casper, USAA, Ring and Crowne Plaza Hotels. Liberal group Media Matters posted a list of Hannity’s advertisers on Tuesday in an attempt to encourage more advertisers to drop the show.
Hannity has called the effort a “kill shot,” similar to calls for boycotts against former fellow Fox host Bill O’Reilly.
“They’ll try to ratchet up the intensity of their rationale. It does not justify an attempt to get me fired. And that’s what this is. This is an attempt to take me out. This is a kill shot,” he said.
{mosads}Hannity said Wednesday that despite Fox News’s decision to retract the Seth Rich story, he operates independently and has “retracted nothing.”
“I am not Fox.com or FoxNews.com, I retracted nothing,” Hannity said. “For those accusing me of pushing a conspiracy theory, you are the biggest phony hypocrites in the entire world,” he continued.
On Tuesday, Fox News reported that the slain DNC staffer had been in contact with Wikileaks before he died. The story was quickly debunked, and Fox News retracted it, saying the report “was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require.”