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Howard Kurtz’ Phony Equivalence Just Happens To Spin Fox’s Mistaken Report Of Congressman Young’s Death

Posted by Ellen -7859.80pc on October 21, 2013 · Flag

Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz properly recognized Fox’s big blooper of the week: the reported death of Congressman Bill Young – while he was still alive. “That’s a terrible mistake,” Kurtz noted on his Media Buzz show yesterday. And then he did his best to make you think it was not so terrible by suggesting it was just like a couple of erroneous tweets about Fox’s correction.

“Fox apologized with its correction 12 minutes after the report aired,” Kurtz said. He added immediately, “But then the story took a strange twist online.”

The “strange twist” Kurtz was referring to were erroneous tweets from Politico’s Dylan Byers, the New York Times’ Brian Stelter and CNN’s Piers Morgan indicating that Fox had not apologized for its mistake.

“Well, we all make mistakes,” Kurtz concluded, before adding his condolences to Congressman Young’s family (Young had died the next day).

This was a clever sleight of hand from Kurtz. In the first place, while it's true that we all do make mistakes, some mistakes are much worse than others. There’s no real equivalence between a false, breaking news alert that a Congressman has died and a couple of erroneous tweets about Fox’s correction (or lack thereof). In the second place, the tweets were not really part of “the story” and had nothing to do with Fox’s gaffe. I doubt anyone other than Fox cared much about them. However, by lumping them all together as somehow of a piece, it allowed Kurtz to feign a tolerance for some Fox News antagonists at the same time that he was actually maligning them. And not so coincidentally distracting from Fox’s error.

Which, by the way, he never explained.

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truman commented 2013-10-22 10:23:29 -0400 · Flag
A highly partisan media outlet reporting on the objectivity and accuracy of the media. What is wrong with this picture?
Aria Prescott commented 2013-10-22 03:04:07 -0400 · Flag
Since signing on with Fox, Kurtz’s routine on his own show, and as a guest/panelist on others has been the same one note: Fox News does only good, and when they screw up, it’s a minor mistake at best. But everyone else is evil, bad and mean- So we should forgive them, because they do it out of being the media equivalent of a slow child.

To put it how one of my FB friends summed up his show: It’s like he learned how to report the media from watching Taylor Swift explain her songs, and replacing “ex boyfriend” with “Mainstream Media.”

Even Newsbusters and Breitbart are hard-pressed to believe anything he says, I am not even kidding on that, even in text you can tell they hate him for making them second guess master Ailes. Which is probably why most watchdog sites are happy to just let him crash in peace.
Kent Brockman commented 2013-10-21 23:36:15 -0400 · Flag
Fux Nuze sez
Actually, we never make mistakes, we just plain & simple Lie a helluva lot! Remember:

In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.
Marc Nichol commented 2013-10-21 18:34:55 -0400 · Flag
Did Kurtz cover Hannity’s fraudulent panel on health care? I watched some of it but didn’t see it. And will he have the guts to cover Folkenflik fairly, including that Fox pr staff made up fake accounts to trash people on websites that wrote critically of the network? He said he would be independent, well these are your moments Howie. I have little confidence he won’t continue his tool time show
NewsHounds posted about Howard Kurtz’ Phony Equivalence Just Happens To Spin Fox’s Mistaken Report Of Congressman Young’s Death on NewsHounds' Facebook page 2013-10-21 17:56:14 -0400
No, Howie, Fox's false report about the death of an ill congressman is nothing like a few tweets mistakenly saying it was not corrected within the hour.








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