One should report the news if “News” is in your corporate brand name. And by “news” I mean facts confirmed by multiple sources, not raw speculation meant to inflame the passions of your audience. Speculation is properly labeled commentary or opinion, not news. Or so you and I, news consumers, would think. But, alas, we would be wrong. It seems at Fox News, rank speculation and misinformation with little if any basis in fact now fits the definition of news. Case in point? Fox News anchors alleging that Al Qaeda terrorists may have started the California fires, based on a single 4 year old FBI memo that even the FBI found questionably sourced (via Raw Story):
Did al Qaeda start the California wildfires?
As more than a million people escaped the flames, Fox News anchors couldn’t help speculating about a terrorism link to the blazes ravaging southern California.
“I’ve heard some people talk about this a little bit to me, but have you heard anybody suggest that this could be some form of terrorism,” Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy asked Wednesday morning. […]
Later Wednesday, Fox anchors returned to fanning the terror fears, digging up a four-year-old FBI memo and presenting it as new information relating to an al Qaeda link to the fires.
In June of 2003, FBI agents in Denver detailed an al Qaeda detainee’s discussion of a plot to set forest fires around the western United States, although investigators couldn’t determine whether the detainee was telling the truth, and his plot did not include setting fires in California.
Such small discrepancies in dates and details proved to be no obstacles for Fox anchors, who reported that the memo was from “late June of this year” and “is just popping up this morning.”
The memo was first reported by the Arizona Republic in July 2003, although a Fox anchor said it was reported “five days ago.” …
A July 11, 2003, AP story, still available online via USA Today, reported, “The contents of the June 25 memo from the FBI’s Denver office were reported Friday by The Arizona Republic.”
On Fox, that information became, “The June 25 memo from the FBI’s Denver offices was reported three days ago, excuse me five days ago, by the Arizona Republic.”
Further distorting the report, Fox failed to mention a key caveat from the 2003 AP story they appear to have ripped from.
“Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, told The Associated Press that officials there took note of the warning but didn’t see a need to act further on it.”
So, to recap: Fox News falsely reported the date of the FBI memo (hell, they were only off by 4 freaking years!) and lied by omission by failing to inform its readers that 1) the memo never mentioned California specifically, and 2) the FBI did not consider the information worthy of further action. In short, they were grossly negligent, at best (and that’s being charitable), or they flat out lied, at worst. Either way, what they “reported” was hardly news. It was instead more on the level of propaganda such as would have been expected from the former Soviet newspaper Pravda, which, like “Fair and Balanced” Fox News, also had a misleading moniker (Pravda means “the Truth” in Russian).
So, will Fox News now retract this misinformation which they have broadcast to their audience which further stokes the fears of terrorist attacks from Al Qaeda?
Don’t bet on it.
