By Peter Barry Chowka
On November 28, there was more evidence that Sean Hannity is the second most wanted man on the take down list of the anti-Trump Resistance. On that day, the New York Times – in earlier days the “newspaper of record” and still the most influential, and lately Deep State driven, agenda-setting newspaper in the U.S. – posted an 8,000 word cover story by Matthew Shaer that will be published in its next Sunday magazine (Dec. 3), along with a striking cover photo of the subject.
The subject? Sean Hannity. The cover title? “How Far Will Sean Hannity Go?” (in his defense of President Trump). The photo is a comical pose struck by Hannity taken during a half hour photo shoot during which, Hannity said, hundreds of pictures were snapped. The one that was selected by the Times editors, according to Hannity, is the worst one, showing him looking angry and scary, if not demonic. The Drudge Report described its link to it on Tuesday as “NYT goes for anger.”
The ultimate target in all of this is the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. The attempted take down of Hannity would be a significant step on the path to that final objective of regime change.
The campaign to take down Sean Hannity which began in earnest months ago is now expanding and intensifying. In addition to being the most prominent defender of President Trump, Hannity is the most prolific and consistent mainstream media figure to, night after night, expose the scandals and criminality of the Democrats and the Deep State – all of which go largely unreported by the rest of the MSM.
Hannity made light of the whole New York Times Sunday Magazine spread on his radio and Fox News televisionprograms later on Tuesday. A close read of the article, however, offers some alarming insights into the tactics of the Trump-hating MSM.
The Times story is correct in much of the information about Hannity that it presents. But it is never without a leftist anti-Trump spin. The Times reporter and a photographer also got Hannity, who cooperated fully with the reporter, to take them to his humble childhood home on Long Island, New York, where they knocked on the door and were given a tour of the house by the current residents.
Early on, the article describes Hannity as hosting a “fact free” program. Really? Hannity’s broadcasts on Fox News for at least the past six months have been filled not only with probing and verifiable facts but the input of some of the most credible and accomplished investigative journalists from mainstream publications. These include John Solomon from The Hill, Sara Carter from Circa News, and Fox News’s own stable of reporters, including attorney and anchor Gregg Jarrett, that advance the stories that Hannity is reporting. Sean Hannity is not a solo act or a one-man band making up stories. To call Hannity’s and his contributors’ work “fact free” is ridiculous – and it’s a lie.
The Times author also links Hannity to Alex Jones of Infowars. Based on sources that I have, I doubt that Hannity and his staff are closely following what Infowars is doing, and they certainly aren’t taking their talking points or information from Alex Jones.
The role of Vox
It turns out that the Times article on Hannity incorporates attack journalism that originated with Vox, the far-left website co-founded in 2014 by leftist blogger and writer Ezra Klein, a darling of the trendy, punk ethos-worshipping commentariat. Klein was one of the first to catch an early wave of social media, in this case narcissistic self-obsessed political blogging, while he was still a student at USC in the early 2000s.
Later, Klein went on to write articles and blog for the Washington Post. He has appeared for years as a frequent guest on the partisan prime time leftist echo chamber programs pushed out by MSNBC. Among his other claims to fame, Klein is responsible for starting a super-secret off-the-record online chat forum in Washington, D.C. in 2007 called JournoList, involving the active participation of many of the top journalists in the country, all of them left leaning. The effort was exposed in a 2009 article in Politico, of all places, titled “JournoList: Inside the Echo Chamber:”
For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.
Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?
Not at all, says Ezra Klein, the 24-year-old American Prospect blogging wunderkind who formed JournoList in February 2007. “Basically,” he says, “it’s just a list where journalists and policy wonks can discuss issues freely.”
But some of the journalists who participate in the online discussion say — off the record, of course — that it has been a great help in their work. On the record, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin acknowledged that a Talk of the Town piece — he won’t say which one — got its start in part via a conversation on JournoList. And JLister Eric Alterman, The Nation writer and CUNY professor, said he’s seen discussions that start on the list seep into the world beyond.
Imagine, for a moment, if an identical group of right leaning mainstream media journalists had participated in a similar super-secret chat forum, for the purpose of exchanging and floating ideas and brainstorming conservative stories that would later make it into the mainstream press. Well, you couldn’t imagine it because it would never happen – there are virtually no major mainstream journalists anymore who lean right.
The writer at Vox whose recent writings on Hannity apparently served as a fundamental basis for the Times article is Alvin Chang. On Nov. 14, Vox published Chang’s attack article “Sean Hannity has become the media’s top conspiracy theorist.” In the Times article, which in many ways mimics and cribs the details and spin from the Vox article from two weeks earlier, Times author Shaer writes that Hannity:
…is also a figure prone to barreling headfirst into the murky territory between opinion and out-and-out conspiracy theorism [sic]. (snip)
In November, Alvin Chang, a writer for Vox, crunched data from two years of Hannity TV transcripts and concluded that Hannity was, in his mentions of topics like “the deep state” and the uranium deal, the media’s “top conspiracy theorist.”
On November 22, another Vox employee, Video Producer, Strikethrough at Vox.com, Carlos Maza, who describes himself as the “gay wonk,” posted an 8-minute Vox video “How Trump turned Sean Hannity into a conspiracy theorist.” The professionally-produced, incredibly slick and detailed video creatively presents Hannity as a conspiracy monger parroting the rantings of Infowars founder Alex Jones (“the most hated man in American media,” as I described him in an article on June 18, 2017). On November 29, 2017, after five days online at YouTube, Maza’s anti-Hannity video had racked up over 650,000 views.
On the same day as his video appeared, Maza is credited with writing another attack article on Hannity for Vox, this one titled “How Trump turned Sean Hannity into a conspiracy theorist – The Fox News host is sounding a lot like Alex Jones.” The article features a still frame grabbed from the video depicting Hannity as wearing a tin foil hat.
So here we have it: The New York Times, the previously respected “newspaper of record,” is now little more than a conduit and a mouthpiece for the über left wing rag Vox and two of its chief propagandists, Chang and the self-described “gay nerd” Maza – doing the bidding of the anti-Trump Resistance. Oh, it should not be overlooked that the only other job that Maza has ever had, before he joined Vox last January, was to work at Media Matters for America from 2011 until his job with Vox started.
Sean Hannity was prescient and right on when he has said of the MSM starting several years back that “journalism is dead in America.”
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. Follow Peter on Twitter @pchowka.
By Peter Barry Chowka
A new radical left campaign targeting Hannity’s advertisers is aiming a “kill shot” at the conservative host. Will it succeed?
On Friday, November 10, Sean Hannity reported on the fast moving story involving Alabama Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore. On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that Moore allegedly pursued inappropriate relationships in the late 1970s, when he was in his early 30s, with several teenage girls and had illegal sexual contact with one of them who was underage at the time.
Hannity’s telephone interview with Moore, broadcast live on his radio show and replayed later on his nightly Fox News Channel program, won more praise than might have been expected from a variety of analysts for asking Moore tough questions and for getting the former judge to go on the record in the first place. The interview represented Moore’s first spoken comments on the controversy since the story was first reported in the Post on Thursday.
Almost immediately, Hannity’s shows on Friday reignited efforts by enemies of his on the left, in particular Media Matters for America, to take him off the air via putting pressure on his sponsors to stop advertising on his show. Earlier attempts of this kind, including last May after Hannity reported on the unsolved murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich, did not succeed.
But now, over the past weekend, according to Forbes, Deadline Hollywood, the Daily Caller, and hundreds if not thousands of other media outlets, this latest “kill shot” (as Hannity termed such efforts last May) aimed at the country’s #1 cable news host may be gaining traction.
CNBC reported on Sunday:
At least five companies said over the weekend that they will no longer advertise their products during Fox News’ “Hannity” television show. . . Keurig, Realtor.com, 23 and Me, Eloquii and Nature’s Bounty all pulled their ads from the television show, in response to Fox host Sean Hannity’s coverage of the sexual misconduct allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
Hannity, never one to support boycotts, has not specifically called for a boycott of the advertisers who are deserting him. Instead, he has posted tweets on his Twitter feed about his interest in what his fans and critics of the advertisers are doing.
He also announced to his Twitter followers on Sunday evening:
Deplorable friends, I am buying 500 coffee makers tomorrow to give away!! Details on radio and TV. Hint; best videos!!
Channces are these will not be Keurig coffee makers.
Media Matters for America (MMFA), the far left group founded by David Brock to attack conservative media, is behind the boycott Hannity campaign. In fact, Keurig tweeted a thank you to MMFA’s president, Angelo Carusone, for calling Hannity’s coverage of the Moore case to the company’s attention:
Angelo, thank you for your concern and for bringing this to our attention. We worked with our media partner and FOX news to stop our ad from airing during the Sean Hannity Show.
On his Twitter account, Hannity has tweeted a link to a Web site – registered to the domain angelocarusone dot com – that is titled and alleges “Angelo Carusone Exposed! Anti-Gay, Anti-Semitic and Racist.”
On Sunday, a counter campaign among Hannity’s supporters to boycott the boycotting advertisers – Keurig in particular – quickly took off on social media. As the work week starts today, the second large viral wave of coverage of this issue is mostly about the spread instigated by Hannity’s fans of boycotts of the advertisers who have ended sponsorship of his program.
The stakes in this emerging fight couldn’t be higher. Sean Hannity, and a handful of other high profile conservative hosts on Fox News, represent the last thin line in the mainstream media that is left standing against the almost universal fake news onslaught by the MSM aimed at taking down President Donald Trump. Last April, advertisers who deserted Fox News’ #1 program at the time, The O’Reilly Factor, after allegations of sexual harassment by host Bill O’Reilly resurfaced in the media, got the host of that program summarily fired in less than three weeks.
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. Follow Peter on Twitter @pchowka
By Douglas J. Hagmann
Just two weeks ago on October 16, 2013, a 103-page e-book book titled The Benghazi Hoax was published. Written by authors David Brock, founder of Media Matters for America, and Ari Rabin Havt, a senior fellow at Media Matters, the book promised to provide, “in intimate detail the story of the deception created by those who fill airtime with savage punditry and pseudo-journalism and how the Republicans in charge of the investigative committees were empowered but ultimately failed to find a scandal – any kind of scandal – to tar a Democratic White House.”
Having been at the forefront of reporting the factual events leading up to the attack on the CIA compound in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, the attack itself and its murky aftermath, I felt professionally compelled to download, read and evaluate the facts claimed in this book. I was anxious to learn how, as an investigator and a journalist, I fell victim to “unfounded and wild conspiracy theories” about Benghazi.
Instead, I found it to be an odious missive that is completely devoid of facts or substance related to the events that took place at Benghazi. If the authors’ objectives were to showcase their skills at using the cut-and-paste function of a computer to arm the most intellectually obtuse with well-worn talking points to divert from the facts, then they’ve succeeded. Otherwise, their self-absorbed petulance and glaring, pompous obsession with politically motivated assaults against anyone questioning the official narrative surrounding the deaths of four Americans will leave the truth-seekers wanting.
Even at 99 cents, I contend that this book is overpriced and an unnecessary inconvenience of the electrons involved in its download. It is masterful only in its failings to address the real issues behind the murder of four Americans, yet somehow succeeding in including a few disjointed and completely irrelevant references to Barack Hussein Obama’s race and Constitutional eligibility to hold office.
I believe that it is unlikely that Messrs Brock and Havt could overcome their arrogant aversion to facts pertaining to all matters related to Benghazi. On the off chance that it were possible, however, perhaps they could address pertinent facts and answer a few relevant questions about the events of, leading up to, and following the Benghazi attack.
We might begin by asking about the purpose of the CIA compound located in Benghazi, in addition to other warehouses in Eastern Libya that were used as logistic centers and staging areas for the tons of weapons and arms shipments destined to al Qaeda related terrorists in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon to be used by CIA backed anti-Assad ‘rebels.’ Curiously, the two purveyors of political pettiness are completely silent on this issue, despite it being at the very core of the Obama-initiated toppling of Qaddafi and invasion of Libya.
It would also be most enlightening to learn the exact location and precise activities of Barack Hussein Obama during the murky 18 1/2 hours from September 11-12, 2012. The U.S. Secret Service maintains impeccable logs of a President’s location at all times, including who is with him and where he is in the White House at any given time. Interestingly, this question is of critical importance yet has never been answered in any significant detail.
While Brock and Havt devote an entire two paragraphs to the issue of a “seven-man security team in Tripoli [that] launched its rescue operation within minutes of the initial reports of an attack and chartered an aircraft as soon as possible in the dead of the Libyan night,” they fail to address the circumstances surrounding this rescue effort. They fail to explain that this team acted in the absence of orders from Obama or anyone else, and that the leading member of this unofficial rescue effort had to use his own money, and any money that could be scraped up to ‘bribe’ the pilot to fly to Benghazi. According to at least one intelligence source close to me, the amount was somewhere around $30,000 (U.S.). Was this money ever repaid to his estate or to his family?
A bit more space is devoted to the findings of the Accountability Review Board (ARB), yet there is no mention of why Thomas Pickering was an obvious choice to direct an investigation that could have any negative implications to this administration’s associations with the Muslim Brotherhood. Pickering is an advisory board member of the pro-Iranian organization known as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), and co-chairman of the board of directors of the International Crisis Group (ICG), whose executive committee includes the infamous George Soros, who, coincidentally of course, donated one million dollars to Media Matters. Pickering is also vice-chairman of Hills & Co., global consultants founded in 1993 by CFR and Trilateral Commission member Carla Anderson Hills.
The significance of Pickering’s appointment cannot be overstated or underestimated considering that the trail of blood from four Americans leads directly to Ansar al Sharia, a terrorist group funded by Iran. Who better to redirect or cover up the operational conspiracy that exists between Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and that Muslim Brotherhood that exists at the core of the 9/11 attack? Pickering is the obvious choice.
There are many more questions that I have identified in my nearly three dozen published articles detailing the events that took place in Benghazi before, during and after the September 11, 2012 attack. Of course, none were addressed in The Benghazi Hoax, as the authors preferred to make the entire tome about partisan politics. This is not only an insult to thinking Americans, it is shamefully exploiting the dead.
I suspect that, by now, you have sensed my overwhelming distaste for this embarrassing excuse of literary tripe written by two sock puppets for the Progressive-Marxist regime. It is nothing more than a modern-day version of an edition of Cliff Notes, designed to be used for the unforgivable obfuscation of the facts related to one of the greatest criminal operations of our time. A criminal operation that not only caused, either directly or indirectly, the deaths of about 150,000 Syrian men, women and children, but the murder of four Americans. And it’s not over yet.
Thinking back to the young Syrian girl chained to a fence and forced to watch her parents tortured and dismembered by Obama-backed anti-Assad rebels, only to be tortured and murdered later, I found it impossible to read without feeling like I needed to shower afterward.
David Brock and Ari Rabin Havt – have you no shame?
