The left wing media watchdog group ‘Media Matters for America’ has been trying to shut down Sean Hannity for years. Last week, when he interviewed Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore, they saw a golden opportunity.
They immediately seized on some of Hannity’s comments and targeted the coffee company Keurig, one of his advertisers.
The New York Times reports:
Hannity Fans Destroy Keurig Coffee Makers After Company Pulls Advertising“Liberals are offended by this video of a Keurig being thrown off of a building. Please retweet to offend a liberal.”That tweet, which was posted with a video of a Keurig Green Mountain coffee maker being dropped from the second story of an apartment building, was one of many sent over the weekend with the hashtag #boycottkeurig.By Sunday night, it was a trending topic on Twitter.Why call for a boycott of Keurig? And why would liberals be offended by the sight of an environmentally problematic, pod-based coffee maker meeting an untimely doom?The story begins, as you might have expected, with Sean Hannity.On Thursday, the Fox News host spoke about the allegations against Roy Moore, the Alabama senate candidate who, The Washington Post had reported that day, made sexual advances toward teenage girls when he was in his early 30s, including a 14-year-old.Mr. Hannity, describing those actions on his radio show while speaking with a co-host, Lynda McLaughlin, seemed to justify Mr. Moore’s reported conduct by calling one of the encounters “consensual.”Later, on his television show, Mr. Hannity said that the statement “was absolutely wrong” and that he “misspoke.” He then brought up the possibility of accusers lying for money, or for political purposes.On Friday, Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters for America, the partisan watchdog organization that has campaigned against Mr. Hannity since at least May, began to criticize advertisers for sponsoring his show in light of his comments about Mr. Moore.
Here’s the tweet:
Hannity fans were furious that Keurig seemed to be siding with Media Matters and began destroying their Keurig machines:
The CEO of Keurig eventually apologized to employees for the craziness. Fortune reported:
Keurig CEO Bob Gamgort on Monday apologized to employees for any negative attention that may have come after the company publicly announced on Twitter that it was no longer running ads on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News — a move that led to Hannity fans smashing their Keurig coffee machines en masse.“The decision to publicly communicate our programming decision via our Twitter account was highly unusual,” Gamgort said in a memo reported by The Washington Post. “This gave the appearance of ‘taking sides’ in an emotionally charged debate that escalated on Twitter and beyond over the weekend, which was not our intent.”“I apologize for any negativity that you have experienced as a result of this situation and assure you that we will learn and improve going forward,” Gamgort added.
Hannity addressed the issue on his show on Monday night. He asked his viewers to cease attacking their coffee machines and reported that Keurig will continue to advertise on FOX as well as other cable news channels.
He stressed that Keurig was a victim in this situation, that they had been duped by Media Matters into taking a side, which comports with the CEO’s statement. Watch:
This is what Media Matters does. They care about one thing. Silencing conservatives.
Featured image via YouTube.
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