The New York Times, which has published a handful of opinion articles attacking Fox News’s Sean Hannity for his early remarks on the coronavirus pandemic, says it will neither retract nor apologize for its commentary disparaging the cable news host.
“The columns are accurate, do not reasonably imply what you and Mr. Hannity alleged they do, and constitute protected opinion,” the newspaper’s deputy general counsel David McCraw said in a note to the Fox host’s attorneys.
McCraw’s remarks come immediately after Hannity’s lawyers sent the New York Times a letter this week, threatening a lawsuit should the newspaper fail to apologize and issue retractions for opinion articles hitting the Fox News host for his initial coronavirus commentary.
The letter cites three specific New York Times columns that Hannity’s attorneys claim are factually inaccurate, thus constituting libel for which “immediate legal proceedings against” the newspaper would be pursued should it fail to “retract, correct and apologize.” The articles cited in the letter include one dated April 18, titled “A Beloved Bar Owner Was Skeptical About the Virus. Then He Took A Cruise,” one dated March 31, titled “Fox’s Fake News Contagion,” and one dated March 22, titled “Rupert Murdoch Put His Son in Charge of Fox. It Was a Dangerous Mistake.”
Of these three articles, the April 18 story about the Brooklyn bar-owner, Joe Joyce, who died after taking a cruise is the most egregious. The story contains the following passages:
Early in March Sean Hannity went on air proclaiming that he didn’t like the way that the American people were getting scared ‘unnecessarily.’ He saw it all, he said, ‘as like, let’s bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.’
Eventually, Fox changed course and took the virus more seriously, but the Joyces were long gone by then. On March 14, they returned to New York from Barcelona, and the next day, before bars and restaurants were forced to close in the city, Joe Joyce went to work at JJ Bubbles for the last time.
There are several issues with this piece. For example, it is unknown whether Joyce even contracted the virus while on the cruise. But more to the point, the New York Times column clearly insinuates that the Fox News host bears some culpability for the man’s death, even though the cited Hannity quote is from March 9, more than a week after Joyce “set sail for Spain.”
In other words, the article suggests Hannity killed someone (doubtful) with time-traveling words (impossible).
The March 31 opinion article, “Fox’s Fake News Contagion,” suffers from similar inaccuracy, although its suggestion that Hannity personally caused coronavirus-related deaths is far-less direct.
Its opening lines read:
Some people are suggesting that there might be grounds for legal action against the cable network that you pretty much rule — Fox News — because you and your colleagues dished out dangerous misinformation about the virus in the early days of the crisis in the United States. Some might allege that they have lost loved ones because of what was broadcast by your news organization.
This is, at least, irresponsible and inaccurate if you consider the context. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was still downplaying the threat of the virus long after Hannity had begun calling it “dangerous,” “tragic,” and “serious.” Other cable and print news personalities did the same. Yet the Fox News host is the one whom the New York Times’s opinion articles blame, ever so subtly, for recent deaths possibly related to the virus.
“We demand that you promptly remove the foregoing false and defamatory statements from the stories and any subsequent republications in print or any other medium, and publish a full, fair and conspicuous retraction, correction and apology as to each of the false and defamatory statements identified above, with as prominent placement as the original statements,” reads the letter from Hannity’s attorneys to the New York Times. “Your publication of the above false and defamatory statements constitutes libel.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that apology and those retractions. They are not coming any time soon.
“In response to your request for an apology and retraction,” the New York Times’s deputy general counsel said in his response to Hannity, “our answer is ‘no.’”
New York Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said previously in a statement to the Washington Examiner, “We have reported fairly and accurately on Mr. Hannity. There is no basis for a retraction or an apology.”
Hannity threatened to sue the paper if it failed to issue retractions or apologize. Well, its spokespersons say it will do neither. So, now it is up to Hannity to make good on his legal threat if it was indeed a serious one.
