UPDATE: Al Jazeera America Snags Suarez to Host 'Inside Story'

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Less than a month after he departed the PBS NewsHour after a 14-year run (see "TUOL" post 10/15/13), most recently as chief national correspondent, Ray Suarez will helm Inside Story, a news analysis program, for Al Jazeera America, according to mediabistro.com's TV Newser Web site.

Suarez begins his new gig on November 11. The former host of NPR's Talk of the Nation is quoted in the TV Newser item as having told Fox News Latino that PBS lacked a plan for him, which caused him to doubt whether he had a future at the public broadcasting network.

Fox News Snafu Blames Obama in Fake Muslim Museum Story

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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.

Will Bequeathed to Fox News

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Bowtie-wearing, Chicago Cubs-loving, Pulitzer Prize-winning  conservative commentator George Will is jumping ship from ABC News after three decades to join Fox News.

Originally reported by the Daily Caller conservative Web site, as well as by The New York Times and mediabistro.com TV Newser Web site, Will has been a panelist on ABC's Sunday morning gabfest This Week since the program debuted with host David Brinkley in 1981. Reportedly, the 72-year-old Will, who resides in Washington, D.C., tired of travelling to New York City, from where This Week largely is broadcast nowadays.

Will is going to appear on a variety of Fox News shows, including Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and Special Report with Bret Baier. Will, who was editor of The National Review and has taught at Harvard, every so often takes Republicans to task, harshly criticizing Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, for example. Still, unforgiving liberals recall his ethically questionable help preparing Ronald Reagan for his presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980 and then, as an ABC commentator, declaring Reagan the debate's winner.

Only at Fox News would adding a 72-year-old cranky White guy to the stable of commentators constitute diversity. Hard to top the observation of Politico columnist Roger Simon who said the effect of Will's move from ABC to Fox was to raise the IQ of both organizations.

L.A. Outpost of HuffPost Live is Dead

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Online video network HuffPost Live is boosting its international presence, while pulling the plug on its Los Angeles office and studio, according to reports by TheVerge.com and mediabistro.com TV Newser blogs.

Twenty staffers in the LA location are affected by the move, though reportedly many were offered the chance to relocate to The Huffington Post's New York City home base. HuffPost Live's workforce of roughly 100 crank out 12-16 hours of live video content daily, a costly venture that, thus far,  has not yielded the numbers of viewers HuffPo had hoped for.  The Verge estimates a monthly live audience of about two million HuffPost Live viewers.

The news aggregator's decision to expand HuffPost Live globally follows the recent departure of hosts, including Jacob Soboroff and Alicia Medendez.