A new study reported in VOX contends that viewers of the Sean Hannity program on FOX News were likely to spread the coronavirus because of his assurances that it was not dangerous.
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, media critics have warned that the decision from leading Fox News hosts to downplay the outbreak could cost lives. A new study provides statistical evidence that, in the case of Sean Hannity, that’s exactly what happened.
The paper — from economists Leonardo Bursztyn, Aakaash Rao, Christopher Roth, and David Yanagizawa-Drott — focused on Fox news programming in February and early March.
At the time, Hannity’s show was downplaying or ignoring the virus, while fellow Fox host Tucker Carlson was warning viewers about the disease’s risks.
Using both a poll of Fox News viewers over age 55 and publicly available data on television-watching patterns, they calculate that Fox viewers who watched Hannity rather than Carlson were less likely to adhere to social distancing rules, and that areas where more people watched Hannity relative to Carlson had higher local rates of infection and death.
“Greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight leads to a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths,” they write. “A one-standard deviation increase in relative viewership of Hannity relative to Carlson is associated with approximately 30 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14, and 21 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28.”
This is a working paper; it hasn’t been peer reviewed or accepted for publication at a journal. However, it’s consistent with a wide body of research finding that media consumption in general, and Fox News viewership in particular, can have a pretty powerful effect on individual behavior.
A spokesperson for FOX News disputed the story and claimed it relied on “cherrypicking.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I live in a very politically conservative area and older people here are quite concerned about the virus. They are easily the MOST concerned of people I encounter, which makes sense because they’re the most at risk.
These multi-millionaire media celebrities playing games with this to benefit themselves and their own careers don’t even seem to be in touch with their audience, which really shouldn’t surprise anyone- they have little or nothing in common with ordinary people.
“Greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight leads to a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths,” they write. “A one-standard deviation increase in relative viewership of Hannity relative to Carlson is associated with approximately 30 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14, and 21 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28.”
Note that they not only imply they can ferret out the “Hannity Effect” (TM) from all other possible factors (which itself stretches the bounds of credibility well beyond the breaking point), but they are actually claiming a causal relationhip with their “leads to” claim.
That’s just stupid.
Even if there is a correlation, correlation does not imply causation.
… and the second Jim Jones Award for 2020 goes to Hannity
all while his cult viewership continues unabated
The worst hour on cable news channels is 9 PM EST when Hannity (Fox) and Maddow (MSNBC) are hosting their opinion shows. Both are pure polemicists who rarely/never allow any facts or contrary opinions to get in the way of their preferred narratives. Hannity was OK many years ago when he was paired with the liberal Alan Colmes; now he is a total shill for Trump.
Remember this fact for the future: Tucker Carlson was warning the public of the likely devastation of Covid-19 before even most public health authorities sounded the alarm. He had a long meeting with Trump that helped to turn around Trump’s dismissive attitude.
Isn’t it pathetic that we have a president who listens to talk show hosts, but silences scientists? Trump has returned to his initial indifference. Did Laura Ingraham get to him?
Hannity was never good, he was/is a horrific far right wing propagandist in the mold of Limbaugh, O’Reilly and the nasally vicious Mark Levin. Colmes was just the token liberal punching bag to be over-talked, over shouted and mocked; it was obvious that Hannity was in control. With all due respect, equating Hannity with Maddow is totally bogus and unfair to Maddow. Rachel is not a lying vicious anti-human, anti-progressive, anti-liberal hand grenade, as Hannity is. Yes, I get that Maddow is not Amy Goodman or Noam Chomsky but she is not comparable to Hannity, she is NOT the liberal version of Hannity. Maddow does not engage in shouting at her guests, she does not cut them off, she does not repeatedly interrupt them or mock them as sanity does ad nauseam.
Damn spellcheck: sanity should have been Hannity. Hannity is not sanity or sane.
Totally agree, Maddow is nothing like Hannity. Years ago I was a regular viewer, & she did many deep & interesting investigative dives. I have drifted away from MSNBC during these Trump years, finding them too loud, intense, & hung up on hairsplitting analyses of IQ45’s daily blunders and outrages. & CNN hardly better; these days I’m just CSPAN, & browsing NPR Newshour. I would make an exception & at least check out Maddow’s topic, but I’m in no mood for that level of intensity at 9pm.
What a good article, it reports very thoroughly on the study. I was ready to scoff that one could do a serious study on a topic like this. Especially: “Maybe there’s something about people who choose to watch Hannity rather than Carlson that makes them less likely to take social distancing seriously.” The study has interesting ways to deal with that, and the article adds helpful material on whether its conclusions are plausible. Vox’s reporting is indeed “explanatory journalism” as they self-describe.
https://www.laprogressive.com/reopening-the-economy/?utm_source=LA+Progressive+NEW&utm_campaign=9668a3ef37-LAP+News+-+20+April+17+PC_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_61288e16ef-9668a3ef37-286983695&mc_cid=9668a3ef37&mc_eid=89923fe117
“Sending millions of people back to work without protection or testing would only result in tragedy! Thirty-four million workers are over 55; 10 million of them over 65. Millions more suffer from chronic problems.The proposal to test people’s blood & then issue back-to-work certificates if they have the right antibodies is mere fantasy at the moment. Washington has allowed more than a hundred different firms to sell serological kits without human trials or FDA certification. The sprawling scientific vaccine experiment lacks coordination, funding, and no one knows how long its conferred immunity would last. We are living in an indefinite lock-out, facing an administration that sets a higher priority on destroying the Postal Service than it does on organizing a crash program to produce the tests, safety equipment, and antivirals that will allow the U.S. to return to work.”
but this is the part that got my attention, because I already read that there is a mutation out there….
Read this:THE STEALTH VIRUS “Researchers hoped that the current killer, a virus known as SARS-C0V-2 and sharing most of its genes with the original SARS, would likewise be simple to identify through correlation with patients’ symptoms. They were disastrously mistaken.”
“After four months of circulation in the human world, we now know that the virus, unlike its predecessors, flies on the same wings as influenza: spread easily by people without visible signs of illness. The current pathogen has turned out to be a “stealth virus” on a scale far exceeding influenzas and perhaps unprecedented in the annals of microbiology. The Navy has tested almost the entire crew of the stricken aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and discovered that 60 percent of those infected never displayed visible symptoms.
“A large universe of undetected cases might be considered good news if infections produced durable immunity, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The dozens of antibody-detecting blood tests that are now in use, all uncertified by the FDA, are producing confusing and contradictory results, making the idea of a back-to-work antibody ID card impossible at the moment.
“But most recent research (which can be reviewed at the National Institutes of Health pandemic website, LitCovid) suggests that conferred immunity is very limited and coronavirus could become as entrenched as influenza. Barring dramatic mutations, second and third infections will likely be less dangerous to survivors, but there is as of yet no evidence that they will be any less dangerous to uninfected people in high-risk groups. So COVID-19 will be the monster in our attic for a long time. ”
https://www.laprogressive.com/reopening-the-economy/?utm_source=LA+Progressive+NEW&utm_campaign=9668a3ef37-LAP+News+-+20+April+17+PC_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_61288e16ef-9668a3ef37-286983695&mc_cid=9668a3ef37&mc_eid=89923fe117
Thanks for this informative info. Sobering.
Thanks, Susan. Mike Davis is a gem of a writer. You can safely erase most of the stuff on these links past the “?” usually — test it, but for many url’s that’s true. Leaving just: https://www.laprogressive.com/reopening-the-economy