In just the month of April, Sean Hannity has described the New York Times as a “pathetic dying newspaper” and its writers as “leftist...hacks.” But this week the Fox News host struck up a convenient relationship with Alex Berenson, a former Times reporter who has rebranded as right-wing media’s go-to coronavirus skeptic, given the air of legitimacy his mainstream background provides. It would seem, however, that some of Berenson’s most outré criticisms of the pandemic’s coverage are too extreme even for Hannity, despite the host and informal Trump adviser writing off coronavirus reporting last month as a desperate attempt to scare “the living hell out of people” and “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”

“There has been no surge,” Berenson told Hannity on Thursday, as the title “FORMER NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER” blared in his lower third. He continued by insisting that “kids, children, almost anybody under 30 is at no risk to this—no serious risk from this virus,” a comment he made as Fox aired B-roll footage of bedridden COVID-19 patients. “Whoa. Well, Alex, hang on a second,” Hannity interjected. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.… Hold on a second. Alex, that changed in the middle [of March].... If you look at the hospitalizations in New York, those numbers changed.” Berenson concluded that the press was responsible for the outbreak’s real problems, saying, “We need reporters who are...not just [making] things look as bad as possible.” As the segment came to a close, Hannity made sure to clarify that the views expressed by his guest were not his own: “I like [that] you’re iconoclastic, and you’re definitely making people think...I don’t fully agree with it.” Hannity said before turning to Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Berenson began to garner conservative-media attention last month through lengthy Twitter threads criticizing coronavirus coverage and condemning social distancing guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which have led tens of millions of Americans to stay home from work, school, and worship services. His commentary has earned him mentions in The Blaze, the National Review, the Washington Examiner, Breitbart, and the Daily Caller, as well as a lengthy Fox News profile. Lauding him as a “former New York Times reporter” who is “sounding the alarm about what he believes are flawed models dictating the aggressive strategy,” Fox News reporter Adam Shaw described Berenson as “not a known partisan,” but rather a data- and facts-driven savant. “There’s no indication that he’s in this to bash or defend Trump or either political party,” Shaw wrote.

In perhaps the peak of his fame, Berenson was cited by another self-professed “half Democrat, half Republican.” Elon Musk shared Berenson’s theories on the supposed inflation of coronavirus infection rates and death tolls. Weeks prior, Musk had written on Twitter that “the coronavirus panic is dumb.” Berenson’s other coronavirus opinions include claiming “it’s the LOCKDOWN, not the virus, that causes the problems”; calling outbreak-mitigation efforts America’s fifth-worst “policy failure,” just a few notches below “slavery” and one below the Vietnam War; and predicting that the media and health experts will aggressively push “to count every #COVID death, to get the number as high as possible.” He’s also taken shots at his former employer, saying that the Times “has been bizarrely eager to cause panic throughout the last month, and the costs have been very real.” Michael Powell, a current New York Times columnist, called Berenson’s coronavirus ramblings “appallingly obnoxious...in a moment of maximum pain for so many people” in a Tuesday tweet. He added, “There is a path to raise questions and there’s another to be an asshole.”

If Berenson didn’t have “New York Times reporter, 1999-2010” on his résumé, he almost certainly wouldn’t be attracting attention from Fox News prime time, where he also appeared on The Ingraham Angle last Friday. At the very least, he seems to be aware of this fact. “I went to Yale and I worked for the New York Times,” he told Fox News. “The people on the left hold themselves out as being science-driven, as being smarter, they think they’re smarter, but they won’t look at facts that won’t meet their narratives.” Berenson is not the first mainstream media apostate to levy his establishment credentials into conservative stardom. Sharyl Attkisson, a former CBS News reporter, became a right-wing staple and Fox News regular following her 2014 exit from CBS and has since promoted conspiracies on vaccines causing autism.

This isn’t the first time Berenson has peddled health misinformation moonlighting as hard, contrarian truth. In 2019, he published Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence, a Reefer Madness–style book warning of rampant THC-linked societal problems. In a letter, 100 academics and clinicians from some of America’s top medical institutions denounced arguments in Berenson’s book, describing his research as “flawed pop science” and a perpetuation of “the worst myths about people of color and people with mental illness.” Last year Berenson donated $200 to the ACLU after betting that critics couldn’t find a single error in his book and losing. But Tell Your Children has earned recognition from the upper echelons of conservative media: Berenson appeared on Fox & Friends and Tucker Carlson Tonight last year to discuss his pot pseudoscience with receptive ears, and Laura Ingraham praised it as “one of my favorite books” while introducing the author in a coronavirus segment last week.

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