As someone who's spent, conservatively, thousands of hours reporting on and thinking about Seth Rich, Fox News, and conspiracy theories, the timing of the settlement highlighted in @benyt's new column doesn't infuriate me as much as the substance of it 1/x

What's infuriating is the absence of any contrition, apology, or remediation by Fox, especially @seanhannity.

As I've reported, Hannity arguably did more than anyone else to amplify the baseless, discredited, and cruel conspiracy theories about Seth. 2/x https://t.co/cCKdI07ESu
.@seanhannity hyped it on multiple nights on his Fox show, on his radio show, and on Twitter. We're talking about a combined potential audience here of ~tens of millions of people.~

Imagine one of the loudest voices in TV saying the following about your dead brother or dead son:
Even after https://t.co/jg1xOw4YqF retracted its original story about Seth and WikiLeaks, Hannity kept hammering away.

“All you in the liberal media,” he said on his radio show, “I am not https://t.co/YVoDTvSQbr or https://t.co/jg1xOw4YqF. I retracted nothing.” 4/x
Only when Aaron, Seth's brother, pleaded with Hannity and one of his producers, Porter Berry, did Hannity back down.

Even then, he didn't retract or apologize.

Instead he said: “Out of respect for the family’s wishes, for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time.” 5/x
In fact, he had the gall to claim he was HELPING the Rich family, writing in a tweet (that he since deleted):

"I said publicly over and over to the Rich Family they are in my thoughts and prayers. I m trying to find the truth as the Mom Dad bro asked" https://t.co/ByD5zfIa3C 6/x
Hannity has never retracted his segments about Seth Rich. Never apologized. Never admitted he was wrong.

Fox would not let me interview him for this 👇 story: https://t.co/cCKdI07ESu 7/x
Which brings me back to the settlement @benyt wrote about.

From the outside, you get the impression that Fox, after putting the Riches thru hell, simply paid enough money to make the suit go away, wash it hands of it, as if this were simply the cost of doing business. 8/x
If there any Fox employees out there, current or former, who want to talk about any part of this whole tragedy-debacle involving Seth, I'd love to hear from you.

My email address is in my bio. 9/9

More from News

A quick thread on the new variant, pulling together information from news sources, twitter, genomic databases, and word from well-placed peers.


The new variant in the UK consists of several mutations in the spike protein, including ΔH69/ΔV70 deletions & other receptor binding domain mutations such as N501Y.

The variant is described here in this pre-print from @GuptaR_lab.

https://t.co/ui2U1r1ANA


The ΔH69/ΔV70 variant continues to increase quite rapidly as a proportion of overall positives (roughly doubling in the last 2 to three days), and is apparently now the dominant strain in test positives in some regions.

Extensive efforts have gone into enhanced surveillance for the ΔH69/ΔV70 deletion with and without RBD mutations, and it is good that we are aware of this.

There is a need for calm and rational thinking, and more evidence is needed.

But the early data is certainly concerning

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