Sean Hannity Loses Advertiser After Promoting Seth Rich Conspiracies

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By Aiden Pink May 25, 2017

At least one company is pulling advertising from Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity’s eponymous program amid controversy over Hannity’s promotion of a conspiracy theory involving a dead Democratic National Committee staffer, BuzzFeed reported Wednesday.

A spokesman for Cars.com told BuzzFeed that they were pulling ads from “Hannity” amid a campaign to pressure advertisers to stop supporting the show.

“The fact that we advertise on a particular program doesn’t mean that we agree or disagree, or support or oppose, the content. We don’t have the ability to influence content at the time we make our advertising purchase. In this case, we’ve been watching closely and have recently made the decision to pull our advertising from Hannity,” the company said.

Hannity had frequently promoted unfounded theories that DNC employee Seth Rich, who was killed in Washington, D.C. last summer in what police believe was likely a botched robbery, had shared information about the Democratic campaign with WikiLeaks and was therefore targeted for death. Fox News retracted its own reporting on Rich’s death on Tuesday afternoon, shortly before Hannity announced on his show that he would stop pursuing the story out of respect for Rich’s family.

Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

Aiden Pink is the Deputy News Editor for the Forward. Contact him at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

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