Hannity Information

Hannity is a television show on the Fox News network, a replacement to the long-running show Hannity & Colmes. It is hosted by conservative political pundit Sean Hannity.

Following the announcement on November 25, 2008 that Alan Colmes would leave the show, it was decided that the show would simply be entitled Hannity.

On the rationale for the new program, Fox News Senior Vice President Bill Shine has stated:

The show's format consists of Hannity interviewing guests and providing his own commentary. Among notable segments is The Great American Panel, running near the end of the show, featuring Hannity and three guests (two of which are notable political or news commentators, one liberal and the other conservative, with the third member being a special guest who is notable outside the political or journalistic community but usually holding conservative political views) in a panel discussion on important topics of the day. The Panel is split into two parts; in between parts, Hannity (or sometimes the special panel guest) will toss a miniature football towards the camera.

The first guest on Hannity was former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Hannity featured an exclusive interview with Don Imus during his premiere week. During the second week, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh appeared in an exclusive two-part interview about the future of the conservative movement and the newly inaugurated President Barack Obama.

Criticism

On 18 June 2009, when discussing the government's "Cash for Clunkers" program that gave financial incentives to consumers who traded in older vehicles for new, fuel efficient ones, Hannity said "..all we've got to do is ... go to a local junkyard, all you've got to do is tow it to your house. And you're going to get $4,500." The nonpartisan Politifact watchdog group called that claim false because the program as proposed and passed, required that the vehicle must be in "drivable condition" and the trade-in had to have been "continuously insured consistent with the applicable state law and registered to the same owner for a period of not less than one year immediately prior to such trade-in."

Additionally, Hannity has been criticized for his coverage of the drought afflicting California's Central Valley in 2009 due to the deactivation of the local water pumps for the safety of the Delta smelt fish, which is on the endangered species list, despite the fact that there have been multiple causes for the drought and that the water pumps were re-activated in June 2009, while Hannity continued his coverage of the drought and issued demands to the Obama Administration to "turn the water on" for several months after the pumps' reactivation.