Has the Administration pulled the Sherrod debacle out of the fire?

In an earlier post I was bemoaning the lack of courage shown in the firing, caving in to Fox. Now, however, the White House apology and other aspects of the story are apparently all over the news. This could yet be played for a good outcome. The administration needs to make the following points:

We do not tolerate racist actions from blacks any more than from whites.

We became aware of the Fox story, complete with videotape, indicating that one of our officials had behaved in a racist way, and took immediate action.

We then discovered that Fox had simply lied, and had deliberately edited the video to support the lie. This is very similar to the lies they told about ACORN.

We are taking two steps to remedy the situation. First, we are extending our apologies to Ms. Sherrod and immediately offering to re-hire her.

Second, we are putting Fox on warning that any further egregious bad-faith reporting of false information will result in the FCC reviewing whether they are serving the public trust as required in their broadcasting charter. An adverse finding will result in withdrawing their charter.


Then they just sit back & watch the explosion as a very nervous mass media splash the story all over the airwaves. There will be nobody left in America who won't know that Fox lied, about what, and that there will bad consequences for doing so again.

Let Breitbart put that genie back in the bottle.

Nothing is so bad that something good can't come from it.

1)Fox and the Media learning their lesson and being humbled by this error.
2) The administration learning their lesson getting punked in the same way multiple times, and also them not continuing to buckle like a cheap belt at the first sign of right wing criticism or conflict.

I'll let you decide in what alternate reality either of those things are possible.

We were duped by people whose sole purpose is to dupe us

i believe they did the right thing by correcting the mistake

how it plays out politically?

i dont know

it actually probably isnt high on the list of the average voters list of priorities like it is for political junkies left and right

"Second, we are putting Fox on warning that any further egregious bad-faith reporting of false information will result in the FCC reviewing whether they are serving the public trust as required in their broadcasting charter. An adverse finding will result in withdrawing their charter."

Maybe make them put one of those "this work is fiction, resembling no persons living or dead blah blah blah" disclaimers on their broadcasts.

not out of the frying pan. ;-)

1. Henceforth and furthermore Fox news and subsidiaries are hereby banned from any White House press briefings, news conferences or official Administration coverage. They have proven themselves to not be a news agency and therefore cannot be treated as such. All press credentials of Fox news have been revoked.


End of story.

A USDA worker isn't clear that Vilsack is the head of the USDA and isn't housed in the White House? Did Vilsack's people say they were calling on behalf of the White House? Neither is good, but these aren't also the main issue.

Breitbart posts a video that he says he didn't edit; it's taken up by Fox. Moments later, the WH (Vilsack there for not) starts jumping through hoops. They're so anxious to fire a woman for mistaken cause that they make her pull over to the side of the road and resign by text/email, and yet they say they're the adults and think things through? They don't give their own employee the benefit of the doubt, and yet say they're on the side of workers?

It was a PR problem. They screwed over one of their employees in order to avoid having a bad PR day. They fully aided and abetted somebody's attempt to make them look like absolute idiots.

Acknowledging that you were an idiot repairs part of the damage, but you've acknowledged you're an idiot. That's not a political plus. Fortunately, it was over quickly and lots of people didn't notice and others don't care. Unfortunately, it would have been over more quickly and without exposing idiocy had they not been in such a rush.

is, as rachel noted, just more of the same spinelessness from this admin unfortunately.

giving the person their job back is the very LEAST they can do.

fyi

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