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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Sean Hannity Gets Fact-Checked Hard On Obamacare Claims
www.huffingtonpost.com/.../18/sean-hannity-fact-checked-obamacare_n...
Oct 22, 2013 · Sean Hannity has been fact-checked, and the results aren't pretty. In an article posted on Salon on Friday, Eric Stern "re-reported" a recent episode of ...
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Salon reporter fact-checks Fox News' Hannity on whether ...
medcitynews.com/2013/10/salon-reporter-fact-checks-fox-news...
Oct 18, 2013 · A Salon writer decides to fact-check Fox News and Sean Hannity on Obamacare horror story misrepresentations.
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Fox News's Howard Kurtz (sort of) addresses Obamacare ...
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/10/21/fox-newss...
Oct 21, 2013 · As Fox News’s “independent” media critic, Howard Kurtz had no choice but to at least mention the Salon fact-check of Sean Hannity that surfaced on ... |
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Fri Nov 07, 2014 7:51 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Sean Hannity Gets Fact-Checked Hard On Obamacare Claims
The Huffington Post | By Catherine Taibi
Posted: 10/18/2013 4:32 pm EDT Updated: 10/22/2013 11:03 am EDT
FOX NEWS HANNITY
Sean Hannity has been fact-checked, and the results aren't pretty.
In an article posted on Salon on Friday, Eric Stern "re-reported" a recent episode of Fox News' "Hannity" during which host Sean Hannity invited six guests to tell their Obamacare "horror stories."
According to Stern, there was a lot more to each of the guests' stories than Hannity let on. Stern decided to conduct his own investigation by separately interviewing each guest, and what he said he found was not that the guests were cheated by Obamacare, but rather that they had tried very little, if at all, to participate in the ACA.
Stern accused the Fox News host of using "fake evidence" to "exploit people’s ignorance and falsely point to imaginary boogeymen," deeming it all a part of the "Fox News lie machine."
Paul Cox and his wife Michelle, for example, appeared on the show claiming that their construction business has been hit hard because of Obamacare, giving them no choice but to significantly cut employee hours. Stern noted that Obamacare has no effect on any business with less than 50 employees.
"In our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did."
The two other couples interviewed by Stern both claimed that the new policies offered by Obamacare would cost them considerably more than their previous insurance rates. After doing his own search on the Obamacare exchange website based on the couples' circumstances, Stern found that this was just not true.
"I don’t doubt that these six individuals believe that Obamacare is a disaster; but none of them had even visited the insurance exchange," Stern wrote. "Hannity is not entitled to point to Paul’s behavior as an “Obamacare train wreck story” and maintain any credibility that he might have as a journalist."
Twitter, as usual, was up in arms over Stern's findings: |
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Fri Nov 07, 2014 7:53 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Salon reporter fact-checks Fox News’ Hannity on whether Obamacare is ‘destroying America’
October 18, 2013 2:52 pm by Lindsey Alexander | 2 Comments
Eric Stern, Salon contributor and former senior counselor to Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, fact-checked what he thought to be a suspect segment of Fox News. In it, Sean Hannity interviewed three married couples who shared their “Obamacare horror stories.”
Afterward, Stern approached each of the couples to delve deeper into what he thought were misunderstandings (at best). In one case, in which interviewee and small business owner Paul Cox had cut employee hours, Stern pointed out the Affordable Care Act didn’t require him to make changes to health insurance coverage. In two others, he showed if the couples had visited the exchanges, it was likely they could find much cheaper comparable health insurance.
The takeaway:
It’s true that we don’t know for sure whether certain ills conservatives have warned about will occur once Obamacare is fully enacted. For example, will we truly have the same freedom to choose a physician that we have now? Will a surplus of insured patients require a scaling back (or ‘rationing,’ as some call it) of provided healthcare services? Will doctors be able to spend as much time with patients? These are all valid, unanswered questions. The problem is that people like Sean Hannity have decided to answer them now, without evidence. Or worse, with fake evidence.
I don’t doubt that these six individuals believe that Obamacare is a disaster; but none of them had even visited the insurance exchange. And some of them appear to have taken actions (Paul Cox, for example) based on a general pessimistic belief about Obamacare. He’s certainly entitled to do so, but Hannity is not entitled to point to Paul’s behavior as an ‘Obamacare train wreck story’ and maintain any credibility that he might have as a journalist.
By Lindsey Alexander
Lindsey Alexander is an Indiana-based freelance writer and editor covering the medical device industry. She earned a degree in journalism from Indiana University and a master's from Purdue.
Visit website | More posts by Author |
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Fri Nov 07, 2014 7:56 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Erik Wemple
Fox News’s Howard Kurtz (sort of) addresses Obamacare distortions on ‘Hannity’
By Erik Wemple October 21, 2013
As Fox News’s “independent” media critic, Howard Kurtz had no choice but to at least mention the Salon fact-check of Sean Hannity that surfaced on Friday to great interest. The Oct. 11 edition of “Hannity” featured three couples telling their stories of Obamacare woe; for his Salon piece, Eric Stern re-interviewed those couples and published his findings that their stories didn’t square with the impression they’d made on “Hannity.” “[N]one of them had even visited the [Obamacare] insurance exchange,” wrote Stern, who has worked as a “senior adviser to a governor” on health-care issues.
So there’s an allegation that “Hannity” pushed a false or at least unsubstantiated accounts of Obamacare’s hardships on Fox News viewers. Here’s how Kurtz addressed — or, disposed of — the issue:
Now, on the other side, Mary Katharine [Ham], Sean Hannity has drawn some criticism. “Salon” did a piece that said that he had three couples on, talking about how they were hurt by Obamacare. And the “Salon” reporter called up these couples.
One was a businessman who had laid off people, but his business was so small it wasn’t covered by Obamacare.
The other two said their premiums were going up but they hadn’t checked to see what they might or might not, I should say, save under Obamacare.
Now Sean Hannity is an opinion guy, no question about it. So he’s not in the same category. But could it be said that various news outlets were pushing their own agenda during this 16-day debacle?
HAM: Well, I think that’s what happens. And, frankly, I think the right feels that because most of the mainstream media is leaning left, and I think pretty obviously so during this, that it is their duty to push this other side and to point out that when the president shuts down parks and puts priority on certain things that maybe he doesn’t need to put priority on, shutting down to hurt people, that that is an important story that the media is missing.
Bold text added to highlight a question: Is Kurtz suggesting that an opinion guy may play with the facts however he pleases? His bosses — not to mention Hannity himself — will doubtless appreciate how he handled this one.
Erik Wemple writes the Erik Wemple blog, where he reports and opines on media organizations of all sorts. |
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Fri Nov 07, 2014 7:59 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Friday, Oct 18, 2013 10:15 PM UTC
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare
UPDATE I re-reported a Fox News segment on Obamacare -- it was appallingly easy to see how it misleads the audience
Eric Stern
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare
I happened to turn on the Hannity show on Fox News last Friday evening. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.
As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on.
“These are the stories that the media refuses to cover,” Hannity interjected.
But none of it smelled right to me. Nothing these folks were saying jibed with the basic facts of the Affordable Care Act as I understand them. I understand them fairly well; I have worked as a senior adviser to a governor and helped him deal with the new federal rules.
I decided to hit the pavement. I tracked down Hannity’s guests, one by one, and did my own telephone interviews with them.
First I spoke with Paul Cox of Leicester, N.C. He and his wife Michelle had lamented to Hannity that because of Obamacare, they can’t grow their construction business and they have kept their employees below a certain number of hours, so that they are part-timers.
Obamacare has no effect on businesses with 49 employees or less. But in our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did.
There is only one Obamacare requirement that applies to a company of this size: workers must be notified of the existence of the “healthcare.gov” website, the insurance exchange. That’s all.
Next I called Allison Denijs. She’d told Hannity that she pays over $13,000 a year in premiums. Like the other guests, she said she had recently gotten a letter from Blue Cross saying that her policy was being terminated and a new, ACA-compliant policy would take its place. She says this shows that Obama lied when he promised Americans that we could keep our existing policies.
Allison’s husband left his job a few years ago, one with benefits at a big company, to start his own business. Since then they’ve been buying insurance on the open market, and are now paying around $1,100 a month for a policy with a $2,500 deductible per family member, with hefty annual premium hikes. One of their two children is not covered under the policy. She has a preexisting condition that would require purchasing additional coverage for $600 a month, which would bring the family’s grand total to around $20,000 a year.
I asked Allison if she’d shopped on the exchange, to see what a plan might cost under the new law. She said she hadn’t done so because she’d heard the website was not working. Would she try it out when it’s up and running? Perhaps, she said. She told me she has long opposed Obamacare, and that the president should have focused on tort reform as a solution to bringing down the price of healthcare.
I tried an experiment and shopped on the exchange for Allison and Kurt. Assuming they don’t smoke and have a household income too high to be eligible for subsidies, I found that they would be able to get a plan for around $7,600, which would include coverage for their uninsured daughter. This would be about a 60 percent reduction from what they would have to pay on the pre-Obamacare market.
Allison also told me that the letter she received from Blue Cross said that in addition to the policy change for ACA compliance, in the new policy her physician network size might be reduced. That’s something insurance companies do to save money, with or without Obamacare on the horizon, just as they raise premiums with or without Obamacare coming.
If Allison’s choice of doctor was denied her through Obamacare then, yes, she could have a claim that Obamacare has hurt her. But she’d also have thousands of dollars in her pocket that she didn’t have before.
Finally, I called Robbie and Tina Robison from Franklin, Tenn. Robbie is self-employed as a Christian youth motivational speaker. (You can see his work here.) On Hannity, the couple said that they, too, were recently notified that their Blue Cross policy would be expiring for lack of ACA compliance. They told Hannity that the replacement plans Blue Cross was offering would come with a rate increase of 50 percent or even 75 percent, and that the new offerings would contain all sorts of benefits they don’t need, like maternity care, pediatric care, prenatal care and so forth. Their kids are grown and moved out, so why should they be forced to pay extra for a health plan with superfluous features?
When I spoke to Robbie, he said he and Tina have been paying a little over $800 a month for their plan, about $10,000 a year. And the ACA-compliant policy that will cost 50-75 percent more? They said this information was related to them by their insurance agent.
Had they shopped on the exchange yet, I asked? No, Tina said, nor would they. They oppose Obamacare and want nothing to do with it. Fair enough, but they should know that I found a plan for them for, at most, $3,700 a year, 63 percent less than their current bill. It might cover things that they don’t need, but so does every insurance policy.
It’s true that we don’t know for sure whether certain ills conservatives have warned about will occur once Obamacare is fully enacted. For example, will we truly have the same freedom to choose a physician that we have now? Will a surplus of insured patients require a scaling back (or “rationing,” as some call it) of provided healthcare services? Will doctors be able to spend as much time with patients? These are all valid, unanswered questions. The problem is that people like Sean Hannity have decided to answer them now, without evidence. Or worse, with fake evidence.
I don’t doubt that these six individuals believe that Obamacare is a disaster; but none of them had even visited the insurance exchange. And some of them appear to have taken actions (Paul Cox, for example) based on a general pessimistic belief about Obamacare. He’s certainly entitled to do so, but Hannity is not entitled to point to Paul’s behavior as an “Obamacare train wreck story” and maintain any credibility that he might have as a journalist.
Strangely, the recent shutdown was based almost entirely on a small percentage of Congress’s belief that Obamacare, as Ted Cruz puts it, “is destroying America.” Cruz has rarely given us an example of what he’s talking about. That’s because the best he can do is what Hannity did—exploit people’s ignorance and falsely point to imaginary boogeymen.
Update: To check the plans I used this useful calculator from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Eric Stern is Deputy Secretary of State in Montana. |
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Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:03 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:21 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Hannity Wages War on the Public Interest by gw
In disregard of the public interest, Sean Hannity used his radio and TV show to broadcast provably false information about the Affordable Care Act. Salon's fact-check of Sean Hannity on Obamacare" uncovered how he distorted the stories of three couples to imply that they were worse off under Obamacare's new rules. In fact, the couples are now able to get more coverage for less money, but Hannity did not retract his report.
By last night, Hannity's lies were corrected on the Rachel Maddow Show, in the Washington Post, Politico, CNN (VIDEO), Huffington Post and many other outlets. Hannity refuses to address any of the coverage calling him out for deceit.
But now Consumer Reports has also chimed in, correcting statements made by Hannity, The Hill and bloggers on Breitbart.com as "not true".
Consumer Reports advised shoppers the best time to enroll in Obamacare was a few weeks off, while expected delays and glitches at HealthCare.gov are ironed out. Hannity took this out-of-context, squealing "Consumer Reports, Ann, they're telling people, 'stay away from the website!' in a segment to Ann Coulter, when just the opposite was true. Consumer Reports has unequivocally endorsed the exchange as the best place to purchase health care.
Hannity's misinformation forced the nation's leading consumer reporting experts to issue the above correction so Americans can get accurate advice for purchasing policies.
Continuing The Anti-Obamacare Shutdown Madness
During recent weeks, Hannity's guests Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, John Boehner, Paul Ryan and Rand Paul have expounded on the ways Obamacare was going to kill jobs, trying to justify a shutdown that would cost our economy an estimated $24 billion and 120,000 jobs. These same Republican leaders could have offered any number of jobs bills that would sail through both houses if they really cared about boosting employment - the stalled transportation bill is one of the more immediate examples.
But they could also have modified Obamacare to ensure employers wouldn't cut staff if they so desired. The very idea that the ACA will cost jobs is an admission that it doesn't go far enough to ensure employers don't penalize workers in offering health coverage.
Then, just hours after the shutdown failed to do anything and was overwhelmingly blamed on Republicans, Hannity threw his guests under the bus, saying it was time for the House leadership to be replaced!
Is It Legal To Lie On The Air?
Ironically, Hannity yesterday declared that he was a "radio professional" fully apprised of FCC rules. But the FCC's Communications Act going back decades requires stations to put "the public interest" ahead of the interests of the station owners or sponsors. Hannity scoffs at this, crapping on it's quasi-equal time provisions and prohibitions against on-air electioneering, ignoring community voices every day,
Directly from the FCC website:
"As public trustees, broadcasters may not intentionally distort the news. Broadcasters are responsible for deciding what their stations present to the public, and the FCC has stated publicly that "rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest."
Today, Hannity is costing the taxpayer valuable money and precious time, just as government agencies at all levels are trying to publicize state exchanges to cover the uninsured, Hannity is distorting the costs, impact on jobs and coverage options.
Hannity avoids scrutiny by cleverly working off half-truths which are technically true but incomplete and misleading. For example, his claim that Obamacare is opposed by a majority of the public, withholds the fact that about half of those opposed to it feel that it didn't go far enough, meaning they want it to be many times larger in providing government-run healthcare.
When a news outlet broadcasts falsehoods or in imbalance, the mechanism for recourse is to file complaints with the FCC, which are supposed to be considered during license renewals. Unfortunately, the FCC has turned a deaf ear to public complaints about broadcast bias and sided with the industry in almost every instance of controversy raised, citing great difficulty in documenting deliberate misrepresentation.
The FCC's high bar recommends that "insiders" or "whistleblowers" turn in evidence showing written orders to distort the news. Otherwise, Hannity can simply say he made a mistake - exactly what he claimed when he was caught editing in stock footage to a report on a Tea Party rally to make it look more crowded.
Not surprisingly, the same FCC commissioners who refuse to stand up to democracy-killing broadcasters land comfortably in plum jobs with the broadcast industry - the most recent example being Meredith Atwell Baker who took a job with Comcast-NBC just four months after a vote to approve it's merger. Keeping the door revolving, the incoming commissioner is also a top industry lobbyist. Ugh.
Does Hannity Have To Offer Retractions?
Apparently, no - Hannity is unapologetic even after being caught lying and proven wrong in fact-checks by multiple mainstream media sources. He lets all criticisms sit unanswered and continues unabated, knowing many of his listeners do not venture outside their partisan bubbles.
My burning question is what happens when his children come home from school after learning how actual debate is conducted, with all relevant facts laid out for a fair exchange of opposing views. What does he tell them about daddy's job, how does he explain why he can't allow any other perspectives on his show? Awkward.
As for OUR children, some of whom literally need health coverage as a life and death issue, how can we allow the #1 broadcaster in his time slot nationwide to lie daily about such important policies?
If Hannity's misrepresentations about WMD in Iraq contributed to support for a war that resulted in thousands of troop deaths, if his lies led to a decade of middle class vampirism, falsely promising tax cuts for the rich create jobs, if he was caught baldly lying about Romney's polling, lying about gas availability and union thugs right in the middle of unfolding disasters like Superstorm Sandy, doesn't the American public at some point need to protect itself from more harm and damage coming via Hannity's perpetually forked tongue?
Are we powerless to protect the public interest from this Orwellian takeover?
(OpEdNews Contributing Editor since October 2006) Inner city schoolteacher from New York, mostly covering media manipulation. I put election/finance reform ahead of all issues but also advocate for fiscal conservatism, ethics in journalism and (more...) |
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Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:25 am |
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