On Wednesday night’s Hannity on Fox News Channel, host Sean Hannity brought on a panel to discuss the recent anti-police sentiment around the country. Baltimore police recently explained to the media that increased crime in the city is due to hostility towards police within the community and the acute awareness that they may get in trouble for simply doing their job.
In the segment, Hannity and guests discussed the part the media played in contributing to that anti-police sentiment, using data from a recent Media Research Center Culture report. That report found that the three major networks had used the phrase, “Hands up, don’t shoot” a total of 156 times from August 9, 2014- May 24, 2015.
Hannity’s roundtable panelists included Bernard McGuirk, radio producer for Imus in the Morning, Fox News Senior Correspondent Geraldo Rivera, and Fox Business.com’s Dagen McDowell.
“The people who perpetuate this false notion of ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ they’re sort of like Holocaust deniers, in reverse, albeit on a smaller magnitude,” McGuirk stated. He continued:
I mean you have the attorney general, Eric Holder--who is black-- who worked for a black president -- who got replaced by a black woman, actually came out and said ‘It did not happen’ and yet the media and other people keep perpetuating that same notion.
Hannity cut in to share the Media Research Center report. “I have the numbers on this,” Hannity stated. “So let me put them up on the screen. Because you’re raising a really good point here.”
Here Hannity put up the tally from our earlier report where we found that from August 9, the date Michael Brown was shot and killed to March 4, the release of the DOJ Report, the major networks used the phrase “Hands up, don’t shoot” 140 times.
Hannity also shared the numbers from our newest report, showing the networks used the phrase again another 16 times from the March 5- May 24.
