Earlier this week, critics jumped on Fox News for airing older footage of Sarah Palin at a 2008 campaign rally during a report about her current book tour. Charges were leveled that the older campaign rally footage was used to leave the impression that Palin’s book tour crowds were larger than in reality. Fox News however claimed that the footage was aired by accident. For anyone familiar with live television, this could have happened quite easily by mistake.
In live television, this is how it works behind the scenes: The on air talent has a list of each of the available clips in front of him. The list is coded (numbered) and the control room producer has a similar page, numbered the same; ditto the director and technical director. The director tells the technical director to push a button that plays the short clip, but there are many different buttons to choose from, each one of which would play a different clip.
It happens all the time that someone hits the wrong button and plays the wrong tape. With Palin so much in the news, there would have been various Palin clips cued up at the time they made this mistake. Fox News gets sloppy just like all the news channels. And in fact, these mistakes happen more frequently when the B-team is working (during daytime, on weekends and over night – all lower-rated viewing periods).
Also, the video clip catches the on air anchor saying that the footage he wants to show is “just coming in,” so there may have been added confusion in the control room. The technical director would have had to properly identify a clip that was just delivered to the room on a feed via satellite or microwave truck. This “last minute breaking news” aspect would only compound the opportunities for error.
No doubt, as the wrong clip was played, the control room producer started swearing, the director threw up his hands, the technical director looked miserable and crestfallen, and somebody probably said “get out back to the anchor on camera”, and they did.
In this case, on live television it is quite easy for Fox News to have aired the wrong footage by mistake. But for a channel that is shilling for Palin pretty egregiously, they do not have my sympathy.
7 responses so far
1 ottovbvs // Nov 19, 2009 at 5:04 pm
……per Lady Bracknell…….to loose the correct footage once is perhaps unfortunate, to loose it twice suggests carelessness(or something more malign given it’s Fox News)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts988
2 teabag // Nov 19, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Happens regularly on Faux. They also ALWAYS put a (D) against any republican caught with his pants down, every time.
3 cpanza // Nov 19, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I have no idea whether it happened on purpose. However, you must admit that twice in one week, making the same exact mistake, is at least odd.
4 MI-GOPer // Nov 20, 2009 at 8:59 am
Wow, three circle jerk trolls come out from under the bridge and complain about Fox?
The real news is that on this year’s election night, FoxNews got over 4m viewers to CNN’s 800k, and MSNBC’s 900K. Ouch, it’s gotta hurt when American viewers no longer trust the liberally-biased, pro-Obama MSM and are tuning in to fair and balanced reporting from FoxNews.
4thQ ratings are almost finished and it looks like CNN and MSNBC will be down 40-50-65% or more over last year’s figures and FoxNews will be posting more record gains.
What was that about a production staff mistake, automaticBS?
5 oldgal // Nov 20, 2009 at 10:32 am
For ardent fans of Fox there is no amount of evidence which would convince them this was not an accident. For ardent detractors of Fox there is no amount of evidence which would convince them this was just an accident. The rest of us just don’t care.
6 JohnMcC // Nov 20, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Wow, Mr GOPer sure straightened me out!!!! Darn here I was thinking that stupid old factual stuff was what made a ‘news channel’ great and misreporting the–well, have to say it–’facts’ made a news channel stink. What was wrong with me?! Thank you, sir, for helping me see that it is RATINGS not facts that’s really important.
Bear with us liberals, sooner or later we’ll get over the fixation on ‘reality’.
7 MI-GOPer // Nov 20, 2009 at 3:07 pm
JohnMcC, not too original on the character name; not too original on the comment; not too original on the thoughts either.
Troll Tribe or just another version of BlankHead playing games on the site? Hmmmm.
Ratings, as they reflect the interest of most Americans, are facts. It’s a message only those who think they have a monopoly on the media’s message would miss. Like you JohnMcC.
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