Did Fox News star Sean Hannity help spread the Covid-19?

It has been on the hot seat since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic in the United States. Sean Hannity, one of the main stars of the ultra-conservative Fox News chain, has been repeatedly accused of having delayed recognizing the health risk posed by the coronavirus and of having spread false rumors about the disease to humans. 'antenna.

Colleagues from other media and journalism professors named him in an open letter, published in early April, criticizing Fox News coverage of the epidemic. His name also appears in a lawsuit filed on April 10 alleging that the channel had "voluntarily" promoted false information relating to the Covid-19 in February and March. 

Sean Hannity aficionados more affected by the virus than those of Tucker Carlson

Sean Hannity vigorously defended himself against these accusations, saying that he had never spread "rumors" about the coronavirus and that he was even among the first to warn of the risk of its rapid spread. . He also threatened the New York Times with legal action for an April 18 article that questioned his first television appearances about the Covid-19.

But the noose has tightened further around the star presenter with the publication, on April 20, of an economic study which suggests that watching Sean Hannity at the start of the epidemic was bad for the health of viewers. The journalist's statements between late February and mid-March, comparing the coronavirus to the flu and accusing the Democratic Party of exploiting the virus for the sole purpose of harming President Donald Trump, would have pushed spectators not to take the health risk seriously enough. 

Result: the disease has wreaked more havoc among aficionados of "Hannity" than among those of Tucker Carlson, another pillar of Fox who, himself, very early on warned of the risks of the virus, noted the three economists of the University of Chicago who performed this study. According to them, there were around 30% more reported cases of Covid-19 contamination among addicts to the "Hannity" program than among those who follow Tucker Carlson, and an additional 21% of deaths as of March 28. .

Fox News quickly challenged the results, calling the economists' move "reckless and irresponsible." However, "the substance of their article seems rather convincing", recognizes Sylvain Chabé-Ferret, economist specializing in the evaluation of public policies at the Toulouse School of Economics, contacted by France 24. 

The choice of viewers when night falls

Admittedly, this is a prepublication that has not yet been peer reviewed, as is the norm for scientific articles, and the authors "used a new idea for their demonstration which had never has been tested in this context, "said the French economist. But these researchers are recognized in their field and "we cannot say that it is economists belonging to the fringe of their discipline who would seek to take advantage of the situation to attract media coverage to them", he continues.

To assess whether it was more risky for health to watch Sean Hannity rather than Tucker Carlson at the start of the epidemic, economists sought to compare the number of contamination among the followers of these two Fox News stars at the level of the American counties (administrative division more or less equivalent to a department). The whole problem is being able to establish a cause and effect link. There are, in fact, a large number of factors that may explain why the virus would have been more lenient with the regulars of Tucker Carlson. They may be younger, more educated or even benefit from better health coverage. These are all elements that can affect the lethality rate of Covid-19 or the tendency of a person to take adequate measures to protect themselves from the risk of contamination.

It was therefore necessary to eliminate these uncertainties and find an element of comparison as neutral as possible. This is where economists showed originality: they opted for the sunset time. "We can see that Americans tend to turn on their workstations when night falls," said Sylvain Chabé-Ferret. In the United States, Tucker Carlson airs an hour before Sean Hannity. Depending on the time zone, Fox News fans will therefore come across Tucker Carlson by starting their TV evening or rather his colleague. Again, the study authors conducted comparisons that confirmed their initial findings: the "foxophiles" who watched Sean Hannity and not Tucker Carlson were more severely affected by the epidemic.

Not a 100% guarantee of reliability

For Sylvain Chabé-Ferret, it is a solid approach to prove a cause and effect link. "It stems from the scientific credibility revolution in economics in the 1990s, which improved the reliability of empirical tests," said the economist at the Toulouse School of Economics. Esther Duflo, 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, is one of the main heirs of this economic current.

However, this method does not provide an absolute guarantee of reliability. In the toolbox resulting from this scientific credibility revolution, "it does not belong to the top of the most recognized methods", explains Sylvain Chabé-Ferret. "It offers the researcher too much freedom of interpretation, allowing him to come across something that will seem true to him."

This is why he estimates that there is "approximately 50%" chance that the authors of the study fell right with their conclusion. The experiment should be repeated and, perhaps, some other method applied to prove the validity of these observations.

It would be all the more interesting that the scope of this study goes beyond the simple framework of the presenter of Fox News, believes Sylvain Chabé-Ferret. "I don't think the idea is to accuse Sean Hannity in particular, but rather to demonstrate scientifically that misinformation can have a real impact on people's behavior," he notes. This study may also be, he said, a form of response from researchers who, "like much of the scientific community, have been stunned to see how some politicians and media in the United States have treated lightly experts say during this pandemic. " It is a way of reminding them that this lightness can be paid at a high health price.

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