The Washington Post published a moving column on Tuesday that, for good reason, became one of the most widely read articles on the site. It was written by Mary and Joel Rich, who are public figures only insofar as they’re the parents of Seth Rich, the 27-year-old staffer at the Democratic National Committee who was shot dead late one night last year in Washington, D.C. Police, who haven’t solved the case, believe it was a botched robbery. But because of Rich’s place of employment, and some reckless (and retracted) suggestions by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, denizens of the right-wing fever swamps have concocted a conspiracy theory that Rich was murdered for supplying DNC emails to WikiLeaks. And they won’t let it go.



“Imagine that every single day, with every phone call,” the Riches wrote, “you hope that it’s the police, calling to tell you that there has been a break in the case. Imagine you have no answers—that no one has been brought to justice and there are few clues leading to the killer or killers. Imagine that instead, every call that comes in is a reporter asking what you think of a series of lies or conspiracies about the death. That nightmare is what our family goes through every day.” There is no evidence “that Seth’s murder had any connection to his job,” they added. “Still, conservative news outlets and commentators continue, day after painful day, to peddle discredited conspiracy theories that Seth was killed after having provided WikiLeaks with emails from the DNC. Those theories, which some reporters have since retracted, are baseless, and they are unspeakably cruel.”

That article was published at 6:04 p.m. Fifteen minutes later, Fox News host Sean Hannity tweeted this to his 2.4 million followers:

Huge announcement tonight about Seth Rich, Trump/Russian Collusion corrupt media, the liberal effort to silence me. And my future at Fox! — Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 23, 2017

This qualifies as “unspeakably cruel,” but came as no surprise to Hannity observers. He has used his three powerful platforms—Twitter, an afternoon radio show, and his primetime Fox News gig—to spread the demonstrably false conspiracy theory about Rich’s death, causing unimaginable grief to the slain young man’s family and friends. Now is the moment of truth for his employer: Fox News must fire him.

I should make clear that I have no expectation that Fox News will fire Hannity, and I fear that calling for the network to do so could make a martyr of the vile host. Nevertheless, when it comes to journalism ethics, there are hints that Fox the network is capable of doing the right thing—especially if it’s in their best interest from public relations perspective.