Fox News Snafu Blames Obama in Fake Muslim Museum Story

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over at Fox News, where anchors and talk show hosts go from zero to full lather in 30 seconds as part of their daily outrage exercise routine, newsie Anna Kooiman was forced to tweet an apology for reporting a false story Sunday about Fox fave President Barack Obama.

With the nation in the throes of a government shutdown, Kooiman reported about President Obama's alleged offer to pay out of his own pocket to keep a Jackson, Miss. museum of Muslim culture open. That "fact" was included in a news item about the Republican National Committee offering to step up to pay to keep the World War II Memorial open so that veterans and others may visit the site that had been closed because of the government shutdown caused by, well...that's not the point.  Kooiman's story, according to accounts by the Media Matters, Gawker and mediabistro.com TV Newser Web sites, follows:

"The Republican National Committee is offering to pay for it to keep it open so that the veterans from Honor Flight are going to be able to go to see this because who did it honor? It really doesn't seem fair, especially--and we're going to talk a little bit later in the show too about some things that are continuing to be funded. And President Obama has offered to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture out of his own pocket, yet it's the Republican National Committee who's paying for this."

Setting aside for a moment that this spoken passage should be taken out and shot and was purportedly uttered by a professionally trained journalist and not someone whose medications have yet to be adjusted, or that it seems to suggest that President Obama ought to consider personally funding the continued operation of the WWII Memorial, the more immediate problems with the story are:

1. President Obama made no such offer;
2. There is no International Museum of Muslim Cultures in Jackson, Miss.;
3. If such a museum existed, it wouldn't be government-run; 
4. The source of the news item was a satirical Web site, The National Report.

Kooiman issued the following contrite tweet: "Just met w producers--I made a mistake yday after receiving flawed research abt a museum possibly closing. My apologies. Won't happen again."

Not a terribly detailed mea culpa, and makes the error-free staff of "TUOL" wonder if Kooiman was using shortcuts to stay within Twitter's140-character limit or believes yday and abt are actual words. What "TUOL" doesn't doubt is that such a gaffe will happen again because many of the Fox staffers, and certainly disciples of Fox News, want such a news story to be true to the point of willing it true, if it isn't. No red flags were raised by the item, because many Fox viewers believe the President is a practicing Muslim anyway.

"We report, you decide," is the motto of Fox News.  Thanks, don't mind if we do.

Online Journalism takes a Tumblr--Storyboard Ends Badly

Image via CrunchBase

After a splashy launch last May, Storyboard, which zeroed in on blogging platform users and organizations, is no more.

Tumblr pulled the plug on the editorial content aggregator of Tumblrs, laying off the four-member staff, Tumblr CEO David Karp announced this week. Pink-slipped were Editor-in-chief Chris Mohny, formerly of Gawker, Executive Editor and Daily Beast alumna Jessica Bennett, along with Editorial Director Christopher Price and Sky Dylan-Robbins, Storyboard's editorial producer, according to articles by Paidcontent.org and Techcrunch.com.

As Tumblr approaches its sixth birthday on the cusp of operating in the black, it decided to jettison the revenue-deprived Storyboard, which offered few tangible benefits to its sponsors.

Favre MVP (Most Valuable Privates)? Gawker Paid $12k for Pix

Image via WikipediaIn a new low for checkbook journalism, Gawker Media coughed up $12,000 for photos of  41-year-old Minnesota Vikings QB Brett Favre's groin that the randy game-caller allegedly sent to a female employee of the New York Jets, Web site Business Insider reports.

Gawker head honcho Nick Denton boasted that the raunchy Favre post has attracted more than 4.9 milion pageviews. The photos of Favre, who apparently was trying to add to his N.F.L. record of most attempted passes in a broader sense, may have added to the value of Gawker's Deadspin Web site, but at the expense of journalistic credibility. Checkbook journalism, long-practiced by The National Enquirer and many so-called traditional news media, promotes lazy journalism, encourages sources to embellish tips for a higher payoff, and divides news outlets into haves (those who can pay) and have nots (those deprived of the "news").

The bought-and-paid-for Favre crotch photos should make everyone in the news business and John Sullivan (the Minnesota Vikings center from whom Favre takes his snaps) uncomfortable.

Palin Publisher Prevails--Putsdown Pugnacious Poster

Image via WikipediaIn HarperCollins, LLC v. Gawker Media LLC (Case No. 10 Civ.-8782), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York this week sided with the publisher of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's second tome, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag, against the Gawker blog that published unauthorized excerpts.

The court ordered Gawker to take down the posted excerpts pending a Nov. 30 hearing, but the parties have since settled the dispute, with Gawker promising to keep the Palindrones off its site. The book was released--to bookstores, not the Alaska wild--on Nov. 23.

Gawker had alleged its posting of the Palin segments was protected fair use, a dubious position given the U.S. Supreme Court 1986 decision in Harper & Row Pub. v. The Nation Enterprises (471 U.S. 539), which involved the defendant's pre-publication lifting of roughly  300 words of verbatim quotes from former President Gerald Ford's memoirs. The High Court rejected the fair use defense in the case involving Ford, who like Palin, never served a full-term in office, though through no fault of his own.

Palin Part II: 'You've Got Mail...'

Image via Wikipedia

Former GOP vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's practice of  favoring her personal Email account over her government Email address has sparked a debate in the state nicknamed "Seward's Folly" concerning whether state employees' personal Emails should be treated as public records.

During her abbreviated tenure as Alaska's Governor, Palin instructed family members, advisors, and her Chief of Staff to Email her at gov.sarah@yahoo.com, instead of at governor@gov.state.ak.us because "everyone and their mother will be able to read Emails that arrive via that state address." Gawker published a number of Gov. Palin's missives from her private account after a college student hacked into her Yahoo address.

Emails from government accounts must be preserved under state records retention laws, which, according to a story in The Alaska Dispatch (http://www.alaskadispatch.com/dispatches/politics/3484-palin-personal-emails) has prompted a public records request for the release of Palin's Yahoo Emails to determine if government business was being carried out in her private account.

Look for the legislature and the courts in the "Land of the Midnight Sun" to weigh in on this topic.  For now, it is unresolved whether Alaskans will be able to say: "I can see Sarah Palin's Emails from my house!"