Fox attributed the slip-up to a "production error" and will air an explanation today on "Happening Now." However, it appears the Fox execs have had it with the footage faux pas. The Chicago Tribune's Swamp blog reports that "serious disciplinary action will be taken for those responsible behind the scenes in the control room. News executives there consider this to have been a sloppy and unnecessary error."
Has the promise of accountability satiated bloggers? Hardly:
- I'm Filing a Complaint with the FCC, shouts John Amato, creator of the Crooks and Liars blog: "Inadvertent footage doesn't end up on a network show. That's a bogus explanation.
I think it's time we started to take action and the first step is to file an FCC complaint report here." Amato references a FCC rule that prohibits the broadcast of "hoaxes" or "fase information."
- Fox, How Could You? asks a facetious Jeff Fecke at Alas! blog: "So hey, I was totally willing to buy Sean Hannity’s claim that it was a totally innocent mistake, because Fox News wouldn’t lie to further the Republican agenda. I mean, the very idea! So you can imagine just how shocked I was to discover that Fox making exactly the same sort of mistake again, this time to support Sarah Palin."
- Astonishing, writes Matt Gertz at Media Matters: "This is the second time in ten days Fox News has been caught deceptively using video to advance a misleading storyline - and that's just the tip of Fox News' video-doctoring iceberg. Maybe now Howard Kurtz will admit that there's a larger cultural problem with Fox News?"
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John Hudson
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