Fox News host Sean Hannity, right, interviews Democratic presidential candidate and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio during a taping of his show, “Hannity,” Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Fox News killed the owner of a gay bar in New York City.

At least, that is what the New York Times would have you believe in a piece that ran over the weekend as a “tribute” to the man. The column, by Ginia Bellafante, was an obituary for a New York man who ran a popular bar in Brooklyn, watched Fox News and supported Donald Trump, and died from COVID-19.

Of course, Bellafante would prefer you not know that, as my colleague, Nick Arama, pointed out, she too downplayed the seriousness of the virus early on.

I fundamentally don't understand the panic: incidence of the disease is declining in China. Virus is not deadly in vast majority of cases. Production and so on will slow down and will obviously rebound. cc: @opinion_joe

— Ginia Bellafante (@GiniaNYT) February 27, 2020

Multiple journalists ran with the couching of this NYT story, that Fox News (and, to a lesser extent, Donald Trump) killed Joe Joyce. Bellafante herself was exceedingly dishonest in writing the story, because what she knocked Hannity for saying is something he didn’t say until eight days after Joyce booked his cruise.

Dan McLaughlin at National Review points this out:

On the other hand, it is also highly unlikely that Joyce was influenced to take a cruise, on March 1, by something Sean Hannity said on his nightly program on March 9. Bellafante really had an obligation to level with her readers about the date of the quote from Hannity’s show.

March 1 was two days before the Super Tuesday Democratic primaries. Nobody in the world of liberal commentary was talking about delaying them.

What is so disingenuous about all this is that the media does not want you to know that they screwed up. They would rather you only remember that Trump screwed up or that Fox News screwed up. Their utter hatred of anything that does not believe what they believe — and, therefore, think you should believe because they told you to — is, at best, misinterpreted as celebration whenever someone who supports Trump or Fox News falls ill, dies, or otherwise makes a fool of themselves for the world to see.

To them, it is a chance at redemption. The young newcomers of the media, a new generation of louder political operatives rather than objective journalists, feel no obligation to history. Rather than admit mistakes were made, they attempt to shout down the President of the United States and play the hero here.

Rather than a generation of journalists who want to be Bob Woodward when they grow up, we have a generation that wants to be Jim Acosta.

Those who aren’t in the press pool at the White House, like Bellafante, are forever tying whatever story they can to Trump, Republicans, and Fox News. It has gotten to the point where you can’t play Clue with anyone in national media, because their accusation will always be Fox News and usually in the Observatory with the Lead Pipe. Or the COVID-19. Depends on the story, really.