Fox News's Andy Levy - he of Red Eye fame - absolutely trashed the Huffington Post Saturday for falsely accusing his network of reporting actress Zooey Deschanel was a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.
In a series of tweets in response to the article, Levy called the Post "pathetic," "an embarrassment," and "hacky pieces of garbage":
.@huffposttv it’s pathetic that a tv site doesn’t know how closed captioning works especially since 5 mins of research could’ve told u
— Andy Levy (@andylevy) April 21, 2013
.@huffposttv also your tweet fails to note your own article’s correction.
— Andy Levy (@andylevy) April 21, 2013
.@huffposttv in short, you’re an embarrassment.
— Andy Levy (@andylevy) April 21, 2013
.@huffposttv but hey u got 2 take a shot @ fox news so who cares if it’s unwarranted, right? mission accomplished, u hacky pieces of garbage
— Andy Levy (@andylevy) April 21, 2013
For some background, the Post published an article Saturday with the front page headline "Fox News Identifies Boston Bombing Suspect As...Zooey Deschanel":
The article correctly reported that radio producer Peter Obburn on Friday tweeted the following picture writing "Oh come on, Fox":
This ended up making its way to Deschanel who tweeted Friday:
Whoa! Epic closed captioning FAIL! “@joelmchale: Oh my RT @peterogburn: twitter.com/peterogburn/st…”
— zooey deschanel (@ZooeyDeschanel) April 20, 2013
But here's what the Post missed and eventually had to correct: this wasn't aired on Fox News. This was Fox's broadcast affiliate in Dallas.
Oops!
Beyond this, the Fox affiliate didn't report this. It's closed captioning which regularly makes all kinds of spelling errors.
As such, although the Post issued the following clarification at some point - "The headline on this article has been amended to reflect that the mistake about Zooey Deschanel being a suspect was made during a news broadcast on a local Fox affiliate, not the national cable news network"- when I woke up Sunday, the headline at the Post's front page still read "Fox News Identifies Boston Bombing Suspect As...Zooey Deschanel."
As Levy said, "pathetic."
(HT Twitchy)
