The New York Times was forced to make a quiet change to one of its articles over the weekend blaming Fox News host Sean Hannity for a man’s death by the coronavirus, according to Breitbart.
The article was first published on April 18th, under the title “A Beloved Bar Owner Was Skeptical About the Virus. Then He Took a Cruise.” The article focuses on Brooklyn bar owner Joe Joyce, who embarked on a cruise on March 1st, in defiance of lockdown orders and travel bans, and subsequently died of the coronavirus on April 9th.
The Times interviewed one of his adult children, daughter Kristen, who said that her father “watched Fox, and believed it was under control.” Subsequently, the Times zeroed in on a monologue given by Fox News host Sean Hannity, who said that the measures taken against the coronavirus were “unnecessary,” and a weapon being used by the mainstream media to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.” Thus, the Times claimed, blame was to placed on Hannity for encouraging men like Joyce to travel anyway.
However, Hannity’s comments were from the March 9th edition of his show, eight days after Joyce embarked on the cruise. Once this was discovered, the Times added in a disclaimer noting that “his comment about the public being scared by the coverage happened after the Joyces had left on their cruise.” The changes were made the day after the article was first published.
It has since been noted that the author of the Times article, Ginia Bellefante, had previously tweeted in February that she “didn’t understand the panic” about the coronavirus, and claimed that “incidence of the disease is declining in China.”