Oh so sad. I guess the network will be going off the air if “errors” are now verboten. Here’s the memo, courtesy of FishbowlDC.
Subject: Quality Control
We had a mistake on Newsroom today when a wrong book cover went on screen during a guest segment, the kind of thing that can fall through the cracks on any day with any story given the large amount of elements and editorial we run through our broadcasts. Unfortunately, it is the latest in a series of mistakes on FNC in recent months. We have to all improve our performance in terms of ensuring error-free broadcasts.
To that end, there was a meeting this afternoon between senior managers and the folks who run the daytime shows in which expectations were reviewed, and the following results were announced:‪ Effective immediately, there is zero tolerance for on-screen errors. Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in immediate disciplinary action against those who played significant roles in the “mistake chain,” and those who supervise them. That may include warning letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other possible actions up to and including termination, and this will all obviously play a role in performance reviews.
So we now face a great opportunity to review and improve on our workflow and quality control efforts. To make the most of that opportunity, effective immediately, Newsroom is going to “zero base” our newscast production. That means we will start by going to air with only the most essential, basic, and manageable elements. To share a key quote from today’s meeting: “It is more important to get it right, than it is to get it on.”
We may then build up again slowly as deadlines and workloads allow so that we can be sure we can quality check everything before it makes air, and we never having to explain, retract, qualify or apologize again. Please know that jobs are on the line here. I can not stress that enough. I will review again during our Monday editorial meeting, and in the days and weeks ahead. This experience should make us stronger editorially, and I encourage everyone to invest themselves one hundred and ten percent in this effort.
The “when a wrong book cover went on screen during a guest segment” is referring to a huge faux pas when Fox was airing a segment on Sarah Palin’s new toilet paper tome and mistakenly showed the cover of the satire book “Going Rouge” instead of her actual memoir, “Going Rogue.” TPM has other boo-boos:
…Sean Hannity used misleading footage to beef up attendance numbers at a Capitol Hill tea party rally — an incident that caught the attention of the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, forcing Hannity to apologize on air.
Then, last week, one of the midday news shows aired footage of an old Sarah Palin campaign rally to show the “crowds” at her current book tour. An anchor apologized a day later, and Fox blamed a “production error.”




9 Comments


Bias gets in the wayof those pesky facts.
Thx to Jon Stewart!!
Are they also going to check the truth of their “reports”?It’s all well and good to try to keep the video and images accurate, but how about making sure that the information you recite has some vague relationship with the truth?
A correct graphic shown behind a newsmodel who is just making shit up, is STILL not news.
(though I love the phrase “mistake chain” – it evokes startling quasi sexual images – and quite correctly admits that these earlier bits of embellishment were NOT the work of just one staffer, but a concerted group effort…)
Funny how it was the wrong book cover that put them over the edgeThe errors in Palin’s favor were just fine, not to mention all the times they “mistakenly” identified Republican lawmakers in trouble as Democrats.
Oh, how about those screen captureswhere a misbehavin’ Republican is identified as a Democrat. Does this Faux News ultimatium also include errors on the on-screen crawl?
And how many times have scandal-ridden Republicans been flagged with a (D)?How many other “factual errors” have appeared routinely in the Faux News ticker? And I agree with Snooky, an investigation into the truthiness of what they actually present as news would be most illuminating. Remember the Faux affiliate in Florida who won a court case saying that calling lies news does not break any laws?
Back to “basics”So does this mean more or less of the screen will be filled with crawls, animated theming graphics, popup boxes, and captions than before?
As it is, most of the screen doesn’t actually contain anything related to news topic being discussed.
Ooh, Ooh, I have another one…Can they not show footage of people running down the street during 9/11 split screen with footage from a bombing in Israel?
Although I have to thank the split-screen and the obvious conflation of the 2 events for breaking my MIL from her FauxNews habit. For the last 6 months of her life, she actually stopped thinking they were a legitimate news organization.
The Fact is….192% of Fox viewers won’t be able to tell the difference.
Enjoy.
Inadvertently?That’s like saying, “We accidently showed a picture of Hitler when we obviously meant to show a picture of Obama. Oops.” Fox even lies when they lie!