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How did Fox News' Birmingham blunder make it to air? Because everything else does
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/12/fox-news-birmingham-blunder-make-it-to-airLet me hit you with a totally unsurprising and predictable bit of information: Fox is making headlines this week for a wildly inaccurate assertion made on its air.
In other news, sky is blue, grass is green, dog bites man. But something about this one has resonated. This time it was so obviously, demonstratively false, that it cut through the usual stink cloud of dubious accuracy that hovers over Fox at all times, and caused international outrage as opposed to just tweaking American liberals.
The falsehood came courtesy of terrorism “expert” Steven Emerson, who stated on Sunday that the British city of Birmingham was “totally Muslim” and that non-Muslims simply did not enter the city. Of course, this came as news to the roughly 80% of Brummies who are not Muslim.
When I was a producer at Fox, Emerson was notorious among producers for firing off email blasts making outrageous allegations about Muslims and offering himself as a guest to discuss said allegations. He was actually a member of the small, exclusive club of guests that Bill O’Reilly considered too risky or extreme to appear on The O’Reilly Factor. (Some other members of that club: Michelle Malkin, Bill Maher and occasionally Ann Coulter, depending on Bill’s mood.)
In other news, sky is blue, grass is green, dog bites man. But something about this one has resonated. This time it was so obviously, demonstratively false, that it cut through the usual stink cloud of dubious accuracy that hovers over Fox at all times, and caused international outrage as opposed to just tweaking American liberals.
The falsehood came courtesy of terrorism “expert” Steven Emerson, who stated on Sunday that the British city of Birmingham was “totally Muslim” and that non-Muslims simply did not enter the city. Of course, this came as news to the roughly 80% of Brummies who are not Muslim.
When I was a producer at Fox, Emerson was notorious among producers for firing off email blasts making outrageous allegations about Muslims and offering himself as a guest to discuss said allegations. He was actually a member of the small, exclusive club of guests that Bill O’Reilly considered too risky or extreme to appear on The O’Reilly Factor. (Some other members of that club: Michelle Malkin, Bill Maher and occasionally Ann Coulter, depending on Bill’s mood.)
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