ABC News Boss On Media’s Role In Tucson Shootings: Blaming Media Is A “Giant Leap”

by Mark Joyella | 4:35 pm, January 11th, 2011

» 12 comments

Recently-named ABC News president Ben Sherwood says “it’s premature to leap in and examine what may or may not have been the media’s role” in the shooting spree in Arizona. In an interview with Broadcasting & Cable, Sherwood calls the lure to blame the media a “giant leap.”

B&C’s Ben Grossman and Andrea Morabito surveyed news chiefs at ABC, NBC, CNN and Fox, asking each about the charges of vitriolic rhetoric ahead of the Tucson shootings and the mistaken reporting in the aftermath.

Sherwood notes ABC News did not repeat the mistaken report that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had died, though the report did appear on the ABC News website as a banner for “about ten minutes” on Saturday:

It hit me in the heart when I see what the Giffords family went through during the time [her death] was being reported and a reminder that we have to get it right. I’m proud of how ABC handled the story on the broadcast side, but accuracy is what matters most.

At CNN, which did air the report of Giffords’ “death,” executive vice president Ken Jautz pointed out that the mistake was quickly caught, and immediately corrected:

A responsible news organization, when errors happen, the key is to quickly acknowledge and correct them. In our case we too had the error and we did that in 10 minutes or so. If the question is ‘how the hell did you do that?’ I guess I shouldn’t even say this, but it’s in the context of other people were reporting it too. The key, which I have emphasized internally, is that you’re always going to have mistakes in a large frenetic breaking news story-hopefully not mistakes of this caliber-[and] be as transparent as possible to viewers.

ABC News, ben sherwood, blame media, broadcasting & cable, giant leap

http://www.facebook.com/people/Dronetek-Bulk-Vanderhuge/100000918732763 Dronetek

Hilarious how they’re all starting to cover their ass after they’re plan to blame GOP/Palin/Limbaugh/Beck/tea parties/conservatives fell flat on its face.

Perhaps the media shouldn’t follow the Democrat party so willingly?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Dronetek-Bulk-Vanderhuge/100000918732763 Dronetek

*Their
http://gordonbloyershow.com gordonbloyershow

The BACKLASH is coming. All the lib liars went too far trying to blame Palin, Limbaugh, Beck and talk radio.
Libs are the scum of the earth and they just can’t keep from lying.
BowenIsland

“it’s premature to leap in and examine what may or may not have been the media’s role” in the shooting spree in Arizona.

Everything else……..fair game .
OxyCon

One thing is for certain. If anything happens to Sarah Palin, or any of her family members, Ben sherwood and all the rest of the vicious, dishonest, despicable Lamestream media will have blood on their hands. That marker has been laid.
http://twitter.com/SailRabbits Magister

Dronetek said:
Hilarious how they’re all starting to cover their ass after they’re plan to blame GOP/Palin/Limbaugh/Beck/tea parties/conservatives fell flat on its face.

If you follow the link, it doesn’t sound so much like CYA to me.
TrollJuice

gordonbloyershow says:
January 11, 2011 at 4:51 pm gordonbloyershow(Quote)
Thumb up 3 Thumb down 0

The BACKLASH is coming. All the lib liars went too far trying to blame Palin, Limbaugh, Beck and talk radio.
Libs are the scum of the earth and they just can’t keep from lying.
===============

Why? Is Rush bending over again?
TrollJuice

OxyCon says:
January 11, 2011 at 5:02 pm OxyCon(Quote)
Thumb up 3 Thumb down 0

One thing is for certain. If anything happens to Sarah Palin, or any of her family members, Ben sherwood and all the rest of the vicious, dishonest, despicable Lamestream media will have blood on their hands. That marker has been laid.
====================

Sarah doesn’t have a thing to worry about. Her numbers a falling fast!
OxyCon

TrollJuice said:
TrollJuice says:

Sarah doesn’t have a thing to worry about

I beg to differ. Based on all the death threats and Liberals wishing death on her as shown in this video, I’d say the Palins need to hire armed guards to protect their family:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxgJKNpjSNI
OxyCon

Make sure you download this video with Keepvid; because all of the far-left cowards who tweeted death threats or wished death to Sarah Palin and her family have complained to Youtube and are forcing the video to be removed.

How’s that for being a bunch of morally bankrupt hypocrites. They all were so proud of their violent death wishes when they tweeted them, but now that everyone can see and identify them, they aren’t so proud of themselves.

So watch the video and download it with Keepvid.com…then repost it back up to Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxgJKNpjSNI
felixw

Face it, Ben. The media showed its true colors this week. The newsrooms at CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CNN are packed with liberal Democrats, top to bottom. And a tragic shooting comes along, and they could REPORT ON THE NEWS, but they would rather SCORE POLITICAL POINTS. So they all jumped on the bandwagon — from CBS to the New York Times, and concocted a half-baked conspiracy scenario connecting the leftwing radical shooter to Sarah Palin. On the basis on no facts, no reality, just their ideological leanings run amok. This tells you everything you need to know about the mainstream media, where journalism has disappeared, and has been replaced by the most crass political activism.

The fact that the boss of ABC News won’t admit this fact — which is obvious to every impartial observer — is just another symptom of the problem.
J Baustian

I wish I could say that at least one member of the mainstream media acted responsibly and presented the news without bias. But I am not aware of a single example of this. Even FNC reported all the wild accusations made by the NY Times and others, as if those accusations were news.

What I find a bit surprising is that, while some of them have backed off as a result of overwhelming evidence that Loughner was not motivated by Palin or Limbaugh or the tea party movement… some of them are still pushing this argument. I am thinking of a Los Angeles Times article published today (Wednesday). The readers really hammered the authors and editors — maybe the editors will get the message but I doubt it.