Fox News blasts methodology of study that claims that Sean Hannity's viewers are more likely to die of coronavirus

After the University of Chicago's Becker Friedman Institute of Economics published a study purporting to show that Fox News' Sean Hannity's viewers were more likely to die of the coronavirus than Tucker Carlson's, the network fired back, attacking the study's methodology and defending Hannity's coverage of the coronavirus crisis.

The study, titled, "Misinformation During a Pandemic," claimed to show that, since Carlson allegedly treated COVID-19 more seriously earlier on, watchers of Carlson were more prepared and better warned about the dangers of the coronavirus, and thus had better health outcomes.

At the outset, Fox News has a fairly obvious point about the weaknesses of the study's methodology. The study does not even purport to have evaluated actual watchers of Hannity's show or Carlson's show, but instead examined death and infection rates from the coronavirus in counties where Hannity's viewership was higher than Carlson's.

Thus, without even knowing how a single actual viewer of Hannity or Carlson interpreted their coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, the researchers claimed to be able to say that watching Hannity led to increased infection and mortality rates from the coronavirus.

Needless to say, Fox News was not amused by the giant gaps in this study and its methodology, calling it "reckless and irresponsible." Furthermore, Hannity defended his own coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, releasing a timeline of his coverage of the virus. In that timeline, Hannity pointed specifically to coverage beginning on Jan. 27, in which he discussed the arrival of the virus to the United States and its potential impacts, and a Feb. 2 interview with President Trump, during which Trump discussed the possibility of completely closing the borders due to the coronavirus.

Hannity has been widely criticized for allegedly referring to the coronavirus as a "hoax" in a March 9 segment, in which he said, "They're scaring the living hell out of people and I see it again like, 'Oh, let's bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.'" Hannity later insisted that he never intended to call the virus itself a hoax, but rather merely the attacks on President Trump's handling of the pandemic outbreak.