Dumb News Stories - Sean Hannity Edition

So Sean Hannity, the conservative radio and tv host everyone loves to hate, has been in the news himself recently because he also used the same lawyer as Trump did, Michael Cohen.

Cohen's office got raided and the speculation is running high that he was doing something illegal/unethical.

OK, so Hannity is in the news, and news organizations are trying to dig up some dirt (beyond the normal stuff he says on air).

Enter The Guardian's piece: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/apr/22/michael-cohen-sean-hannity-property-real-estate-ben-carson-hud

Here's the TL;DR: Hannity owns a lot of real estate through a bunch of LLCs.

Shocking, I know.

For those who aren't invested in real estate or are in different legal systems, this is the normal way real estate is owned on an investor level. LLC stands for limited liability company, and it does exactly that: limits liability.

So if one person in one building sues the owner of the property (the LLC), then the only assets at risk are those things owned by the LLC. In the same way if you own a share of Apple Computer your assets are not at risk when Samsung was suing Apple for patent violations.

The article did have one almost-worthwhile point. Apparently Hannity financed some of his properties through a HUD backed program (remember those ads you used to see online about Obama's mortgage program?). He then interviewed Ben Carson, the head of HUD, and didn't disclose this refinancing information to viewers.

It's a pretty hard to make a case that Hannity's opinion of Carson's "done a good job" materially affects the viewer into somehow changing voting behavior. This would be Joe Foxviewer watching Sean Hannity on Fox News and being persuaded to like the HUD office more than he did previously, and that somehow mattering as a real world consequence. You know who watches Sean Hannity? Sean Hannity fans.

Hannity's shows are opinion pieces, not news reporting. Even if they were news reports, using a government program 10 years ago and saying the guy who is running the department that administers the program is doing a good job today isn't directly related.

I can almost understand The Guardian's editors running this nothing piece. They have to generate content. That's the business they are in.

I can't understand the Trump-haters who jumped on this as proof of evil, corruption, and general bad-guy-ness on Hannity's part.

I saw these comments on https://www.reddit.com/r/esist/comments/8e9lhd/real_estate_holdings_linked_to_hannity_are_spread/ where I first saw the story:

You ever notice the ones who scream the most about corruption are the most
C O R R U P T

The conflict of interest angle is not that interesting to me. Yeah he's shameless propagandist, and Fox will let him be one. What is far more interesting is the 20 shell companies. No need for that unless there are some shady dealings. I wonder if there are any rubles in his bank account.

This man is reportedly paid $36 million for his TV and radio work, and that’s still not enough, so he has to set up complex shell companies so he can be a slumlord and get actual grants from HUD to borrow money to buy property that was foreclosed on?

Literally, how much money is enough money? Who possibly needs that much, or, quite frankly, deserves to be paid that much? He certainly is not doing society any favors.

Blech. Eat the rich.

It goes on from there. So people spouting this crap either have no idea how real estate investment works or are just communists. I don't even like Sean Hannity and this stuff is just so annoying to see.

But then I am reminded of the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect by Michael Crichton:

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.) Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.

So real estate and the various forms of ownership are something I know about. So these kinds of stories drive me bananas because it is literally standard operating procedure to hold properties in separate LLCs. And no, that doesn't make them "shell" companies.

But when I pause to reconsider the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect I remember that the vast majority of news is garbage and that projects like Steem are critical in creating censorship-proof systems so that individuals aren't boxed in by the establishment's narrative sculpting.