NEW YORK (AP) – A liberal advocacy group that targeted Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly for advertiser boycotts in the past now has its sights set on Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity.
Media Matters for America said Friday it will begin asking Hannity’s advertisers to shun him and will ask thousands of its members to also contact companies. The group is setting up a stophannity.com website and plans to hire a plane to carry an anti-Hannity banner in the New York area.
His Fox show “really has moved beyond just being a conservative viewpoint to state-aligned disinformation and propaganda,” said Angelo Carusone, Media Matters president. “If we don’t do it now, Hannity will only get worse.”
Fox had no immediate comment on the effort Friday. Hannity, a survivor in a tumultuous year at Fox and President Donald Trump’s most prominent media supporter, called one similar effort against him a “kill shot” designed to get him fired.
In the spring, Media Matters published a list of Hannity’s advertisers and while it stopped short of advocating a boycott, groups like the Democratic Coalition Against Trump did. Only a handful of advertisers responded. Conservatives launched a campaign against MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, which met with a similar lack of success.