Fox News anchor Sean Hannity promoted a campaign that takes aim at advertisers of Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show after facing a recent similar campaign targeting his own sponsors.
“I don’t see any other option but to fight fire with fire,” Hannity said Wednesday on his radio program.
Hannity brought the co-founders of Media Equality Project, the group now targeting Maddow, onto his show to discuss their new campaign — which comes one day after the liberal organization Media Matters shared a list of Hannity’s advertisers and their contact information, leading some to drop support for his show, according to the Washington Post.
“What we are doing is just wording it the same way Media Matters did,” Hannity said. “We are just saying, two can play this game.”
On Tuesday, Media Equality Project shared a list of companies that advertise on Maddow’s show and contact information, though co-founder Melanie Morgan said they were not trying to start a boycott.
“We have to draw a line,” Morgan told the Post. “We have been under attack in the media and from the media and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
Last week, a number of sponsors dropped their support for “The Sean Hannity Show,” after Hannity peddled a conspiracy theory that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was killed as revenge for leaking party emails to WikiLeaks.
That theory has been widely discredited by numerous outlets, including the Washington Post, and Fox News has since retracted its original article.