Brooklyn bar owner Joe Joyce passed away on April 9 of the Wuhan coronavirus. Ginia Bellafonte at The New York Times tried so hard to blame Fox News (specifically Sean Hannity) for Joyce’s death because he went on a cruise on March 1. Supposedly Joyce decided to go ahead with his plans because Hannity downplayed the virus.
The hatred for Fox News blinded Bellafonte because she made two basic mistakes, which caused her editors to fix her piece. Oh, they did not add an “editor’s note” at the bottom.
The two problems: Joyce went on his cruise on March 1, but Bellafonte quoted remarks from Hannity on March 8. Bellafonte forgot she didn’t take the virus seriously around the same time.
We have seen this happen too many times. I’ve lost count but it shows the arrogance of those in the mainstream media. People in the mainstream media complain that Republicans and President Donald Trump did not take the Wuhan coronavirus seriously when it broke out in China. Yet when you look at their old tweets and news pieces you will see that they casually brushed aside the virus.
Bellafonte tried to convince her audience that Hannity influenced Joyce’s to go on his cruise instead of canceling. This is from the non-edited version, courtesy of Breitbart:
On March 1, Joe Joyce and his wife, Jane, set sail for Spain on a cruise, flying first to Florida. His adult children — Kevin, Eddie and Kristen Mider — suggested that the impending doom of the coronavirus made this a bad idea. Joe Joyce was 74, a nonsmoker, healthy; four years after he opened his bar he stopped drinking completely. He didn’t see the problem.“He watched Fox, and believed it was under control,’’ Kristen told me.Early in March Sean Hannity went on air proclaiming that he didn’t like the way that the American people were getting scared “unnecessarily.’’ He saw it all, he said, “as like, let’s bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”Eventually, Fox changed course and took the virus more seriously, but the Joyces were long gone by then. On March 14, they returned to New York from Barcelona, and the next day, before bars and restaurants were forced to close in the city, Joe Joyce went to work at JJ Bubbles for the last time.He and his wife then headed to their house in New Hampshire. Their children were checking in from New York and New Jersey, and on March 27, when Kristen got off the phone with her father, she called an ambulance. He was wheezing. His oxygen level turned out to be a dangerously low 70 percent. On April 9, he died of Covid-19.
I present to you the Hannity segment from March 9 (He uploaded the video on March 10) in its entirety.
Hannity spoke with Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) as he kept himself in quarantine after he came into contact with someone at CPAC who has the virus.
Hannity said:
We gotta be very real with the American people, I don’t like how we’re scaring people unnecessarily. And that is that unless you have an immune system that is compromised, and you are older, and you have other underlying health issues you’re not going to die 99% from this virus, correct?—Alright so that’s the point, I mean they’re scaring the living hell out of people. And I see I seeing them again as like oh, okay, let’s bludgeon Trump with this new hoax
AG on Twitter pointed out that three days before Joyce took his cruise Bellafonte rolled her eyes at this virus from China.
Plus, as AG points out, we have no idea if Joyce contracted the coronavirus on the cruise or when he returned to NYC.
Joel Pollak at Breitbart noticed the change in Bellafonte’s piece. I know I pasted the original portion above, but here it is again:
On March 1, Joe Joyce and his wife, Jane, set sail for Spain on a cruise, flying first to Florida. His adult children — Kevin, Eddie and Kristen Mider — suggested that the impending doom of the coronavirus made this a bad idea. Joe Joyce was 74, a nonsmoker, healthy; four years after he opened his bar he stopped drinking completely. He didn’t see the problem.“He watched Fox, and believed it was under control,’’ Kristen told me.Early in March Sean Hannity went on air proclaiming that he didn’t like the way that the American people were getting scared “unnecessarily.’’ He saw it all, he said, “as like, let’s bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”Eventually, Fox changed course and took the virus more seriously, but the Joyces were long gone by then. On March 14, they returned to New York from Barcelona, and the next day, before bars and restaurants were forced to close in the city, Joe Joyce went to work at JJ Bubbles for the last time.He and his wife then headed to their house in New Hampshire. Their children were checking in from New York and New Jersey, and on March 27, when Kristen got off the phone with her father, she called an ambulance. He was wheezing. His oxygen level turned out to be a dangerously low 70 percent. On April 9, he died of Covid-19.
Pollak noticed this small, but significant change in one of those paragraphs (his emphasis, my italics):
Eventually, Fox changed course and took the virus more seriously, but the Joyces were long gone by then. A spokeswoman for Fox News said that Mr. Hannity made statements taking the spread of coronavirus seriously early on, and that his comment about the public being scared by the coverage happened after the Joyces had left on their cruise.
An outlet usually adds a mark in the post that the editors changed or updated a portion. None of that in Bellafonte’s piece.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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