They called him a what?

[vakkotaur]

Fox goofed and put a D behind Foley's name. That has gotten posted and re-posted all over LJ. It reminded me of something. Back in May there was a similar goof regarding Congressman William Jefferson:

Top law enforcement officials at the Justice Department and the FBI indicated to their counterparts at the White House that they could not, and were unwilling to, return documents to the Louisiana Republican which were seized as part of a bribery investigation. -- CBS News

The goof was that Congressman Jefferson was a Democrat, not a Republican. Chances are most folks didn't hear about this. I certainly didn't notice it posted all over LJ.

This does not excuse Fox. Nor CBS, for that matter. Such a flub should not happen, but the real world has flubs. While I find that Fox news can be irritating (Come on, a show called Special Report? When it's always special, it's never special.) I figure this was a "just" a screw up.

"But they did it three times!" And how many times is the text keyed in? Once, I expect. Then you just call it up again later instead of re-keying every time. There's plenty going on in the studio that details, and one letter while an important detail is a detail, can get left behind. There are tapes to cue up, other text to key in and call up, commercials to be ready for, and the like. It's actually pretty amazing that things don't go wrong more often. And really, they do, but few get much notice.

"Anyone who'd paying any attention to the news, even the show itself, should have gotten that right!" Yes, they should have. But you know what? You tend to tune out the show so you can do the job. You can't make the show happen and watch it intently at the same time. And whose to say that whoever was doing the job last night was even interested in the story? It could have been someone not very interested who used a rule of thumb that failed in this case. "Republican scandals are about power or money; Democrat scandals are about sex or drugs." It's not perfect, but it's the way to bet.

Yeah, someone at Fox screwed up. Someone at CBS screwed up. If I am expected to believe that Fox takes marching orders from the RNC, should I not likewise believe that CBS takes marching orders from the DNC? Or I could just believe the more believable: people make mistakes.