Hannity loses advertiser after pushing Seth Rich conspiracy theory

Fox News host Sean Hannity lost an advertiser Wednesday after pushing a baseless conspiracy theory surrounding the killing of a former Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer, BuzzFeed reported.

Cars.com announced that it would immediately pull all advertisements from Hannity’s 10 p.m. show, a day after the Fox host said he would stop discussing the story of former DNC staffer Seth Rich “for now.”

“The fact that we advertise on a particular program doesn’t mean that we agree or disagree, or support or oppose, the content,” Cars.com said in a statement reported by BuzzFeed. “In this case, we’ve been watching closely and have recently made the decision to pull our advertising from Hannity.”

Hannity and other figures on the right have claimed that Rich’s death last year in the streets of Washington, D.C., was connected to the WikiLeaks dump of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and have cast doubts on official police reports of the incident.

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On Tuesday, Fox News retracted its story about Rich, 27, who was shot and killed last summer. In a statement, Fox News said its initial article “was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require from all our reporting.”

Hannity, who has been covering the conspiracy theory on his show, ripped critics Tuesday on his radio program, saying, “I retracted nothing.” He later addressed the story on his TV program.

“Please do not interpret what I’m saying tonight to mean anything. Don’t read into this,” Hannity told viewers. “I promise you I’m not going to stop doing my job. To the extent of my ability, I am not going to stop trying to find the truth.”

“Out of respect for the family’s wishes for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time,” he added.

Rich’s family announced this week that they contacted Hannity’s producer in an attempt to stop Hannity from covering Rich’s killing and the resulting conspiracy theories.

“We have seen no evidence, by any person at any time, that Seth’s murder had any connection to his job at the Democratic National Committee or his life in politics. Anyone who claims to have such evidence is either concealing it from us or lying,” Rich’s family wrote in an op-ed Tuesday.