Sorry, I won’t have a link cited for this because I only saw it on television today while watching coverage of the latest shooting in Massaponax, VA.
Those fuckheads at Fox apprently got a phone call indicating that shots had been fired at a Bowie MD school this afternoon. There was no statement that I heard indicating where they got thier information, but about 25 minutes after spouting it, they mentioned briefly that it was a false alarm.
ASSHOLES! FUCKING LOW LIFE SHIT EATING COCK SUCKING TAINT SNIFFING SHITBAG CUM DRINKING SPHINCTERS!
Did it ever occur to you to check this fucking news before reporting it? A woman I work with has a son that goes to elementary school in Bowie, and she was a complete fucking wreck when she saw that report. Another co-worker drove her to her son’s school because she was so worried that she could hardly walk straight.
FUCK YOU FOX NEWS AND FUCK THE ASSHOLE THAT MADE THE PRANK CALL. FUCK YOU BOTH FOR CAUSING A PANIC FOR NO FUCKING REASON AT ALL.
Lower lefthand corner, just underneath silent dog whistle ad…
[sub]Last Wednesday, we incorrectly identified Mr John Smith of Pine St as the man who murdered twelve children and ate their heads. We regret the error, and any inconvenience that we might have caused Mr Smith.[/sub]
Welby, I am so sorry for that woman. I was watching this same news report and I was thinking, “I’ll bet it was some car that backfired, and everyone is afraid and heard it as a gunshot.”
When they mentioned it was a false alarm I threw the remote, fetched it and changed the channel. I am still pissed.
I cannot imagine how much MORE pissed I would be if I were in that woman’s shoes!
Oh, please, Infotainment and Shock Journalism is hardly localized in Fox News (although they’re pretty blatant about it). Just do what I do and consider everything they broadcast to be fiction until someplace like CNN confirms it.
There are those in the profession that practice responsible journalism. Unfortunately, Fox never has been one of that group.
It is especially sad, because Brit Hume used to be highly respected as a broadcast journalist. Now, he will forever be linked with the likes of Bill O’Rilley (sp), Geraldo and Oliver North and things like this.
I don’t think that Rupert Murdoch ever had to say, “If anybody has a whip, I’ll take my shirt off and beat myself until I’m bloody,” the way Ted Turner did.
I have never seen anyone do anything like the magnitude that CNN did with its “Valley of Death” Tailwind fiasco. That report nearly caused innocent people to stand trial for war crimes.
It’s amazing that you did not mention Peter Arnett and his producers from CNN in your list of “things like this”.
Liberterain, that’s the best you can do in in your on going quest of CNN bashing? A four-year old story? You’re slipping. You do realize that, don’t you?
I remember a time when you could have pulled a story six-months old and thrown in a Jane Fonda insult just for good measure, but now you have to go back to 1998, and as a sidebar, the best you can come up with is the old Turner chestnut about self-flagellation. You have let us down.
To be clear, was this FoxNews the national cable outlet, or was this the egregiously wretched piece of excrement Fox5 DC? Because I can say quite honestly that I never knew awful until I saw Fox5. It’s scary how far beyond journalism that station is.
Beelzebubba makes a point. No network is impervious to stuff like this, they think that they have a reasonable report from a source that they trust, when in fact that source was relying upon a source who was relying upon a source who was relying upon unconfirmed or inaccurate information. It’s human error fueled by the rush to get the scoop.
When it was just two newscasts on television and a morning and evening newspaper in each town and one network news program each evening, this kind of thing would never happen. Now that there is news on every moment of every day on three different national cable outlets (four if you count the national Spanish-language news network whose name escapes me at the moment, though I believe that they’re NBC-affiliated and use the same source material, simply translated appropriately) the need to get something to air ahead of the competition, even by five minutes, is extraordinary.
Go back to that day last week when a sniper shooting happened about an hour before the nut started shooting at the UN here in NYC. CNN has a bureau office right in the area of the UN where the shooting happened, so as soon as someone heard the first shot, they flipped on the outside camera and were on air before the guy was even in cuffs – and remember that the whole situation was over in less than five minutes.
Fox stayed on their endless sniper droning (they didn’t have any new info, so they were doing that over and over rehash that all the networks do) and didn’t pick up the UN shooter story until it was well over. They showed footage of the guy in cuffs being led to a car that anyone who had been flipping back and forth from CNN and Fox that day (like I was doing) saw on CNN as it happened, several minutes earlier. Fox got scooped big time, and I could practically hear Roger Ailes bellowing about it from all the way up in midtown where Fox lives. Even though that story ended up being a minor note when all was said and done, there is a fever pitch to not get scooped that way, and when it happens, the impetus to get the story out at the earliest possible moment goes into hyperdrive.
It doesn’t matter that CNN only had the story first because they have an outlet in the UN right where the shooting happened. It doesn’t matter that Fox was the first network to get a one-on-one interview with Chief Moose. It’s today and now, and the people are watching and it’s time to slam that news out there.
And sometimes that leads to reports like this that make people panic and break peoples’ hearts. And other times it means that the network is first to show footage of what looks like a terrible fire at the top of a major NYC skyscraper that no one quite knows the origin of at the moment, but we’re getting reports of a plane crash, and we’re waiting on confirmation, and what’s that coming in from over the river…?
Why not watch them? They are edgy and sassy. Unlike CNN, they present both liberal and conservative viewpoints, and sometimes even libertarian ones. They are the top rated cable news program in nearly every timeslot. And they are as accurate and fair as any cable news network.
I can understand why Welby was pissed. But calling them scum while pretending that CNN is squeaky clean perfect is naive and jejune.
This kind of crap is one of the big reasons I got out of reporting. Granted, I was in print news, but almost all of the same problems and lack of ethics/responsibility apply.
I was trained by some of the best old-school style reporters and editors I’ve ever encountered. These were people who mandated things like fact-checking, research, confirmation, etc. Granted, when deadline was tight and a tip got called in, the amount of fact-checking you could do was limited, but you still could make time to, for example, call the sheriff’s office dispatch center, talk to the shift supervisor and get a confirmation on whether or not shots were reported fired at location X within the last hour.
That takes 10 minutes, max, and saves you from being an asshole and an blemish on the right ass cheek of what can be, when practiced professionally, a noble job.
When I saw that most of my colleagues and many of the editors in the business, both regionally and nationally, were racing toward the USA Today McNews style of reporting, with no research, no depth and very little (if any) concern for accuracy, I decided to get out.
There are lots of times when I miss the job. There are very few times I regret leaving it, though.
You mean the 