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O’Reilly producer quizzed about using palm trees in Wisconsin protests report

avatar by Published Apr. 28, 2011 11:30 am Updated Apr. 28, 2011 11:53 am

In early March, Fox News was criticized for what was called the “Palm Tree Lie.” (It used footage from a California rally in a report about the Wisconsin protests.) At a University of Wisconsin panel discussion on Wednesday, “The O’Reilly Factor” senior executive producer David Tabacoff was asked about the footage. Here is how two newspapers covered his response.

The Badger Herald’s report:

One questioner accused Tabacoff and Fox News of irresponsible journalism for showing footage of a violent protest in a warm climate with palm trees during a discussion about this winter’s union protests at the Capitol.

“That was a fact error piece of video that was run over a series of discussions regarding trouble in a number of areas. I just think that [the accusations] are a cheap shot,” Tabacoff said. “Every shot in Wisconsin was labeled as Wisconsin.”

The Daily Cardinal’s report:

Tabacoff defended his station, saying the clip was not misleading because no one on the show said the protesters shown were the protesters in Wisconsin.

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  • http://www.jt10000.com John Forrest Tomlinson

    First, I should apologize – you may not have been lying and actually believe what you wrote.

    But did you actually watch that clip?

    It has four topics covered in sequence:

    1. Protests around the country
    2. Obama’s statements
    3. O’Reilly commentary on Federal vs state workers
    4. Tobin-O’Reilly exchange on Tobin’s treatment *in Wisconsin* and the situation “in Wisconsin”, during which they show palm trees.

    If the palm trees had been during 1 there’d be no problem. But it came during 4, after the topic had shifted three times – which makes it misleading. Intentional or not is hard to say, but given Fox’s thesis of liberal protesters being bad, they shouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt.

    And that Mediate article claims the fact that footage from Wisconsin is labelled as such, so since the palm trees part isn’t labelled, they were’t trying to mislead anyone. That is laughable. If they weren’s trying to mislead anyone, they could label each piece of footage with where it came from. Instead, it sure looks like they didn’t want to actively lie (by labeling the shots from California as Wisconsin) so they didn’t label them so if people made assumptions…..well not Fox’s fault. It’s possible this was an honest error. But if I was making an argument about something and clearly labelled evidence that supports my argument, and unclearly labelled evidence that doesn’t, people would reasonably be suspicious.

  • Anonymous
  • http://www.jt10000.com John Forrest Tomlinson

    Hahaha – I’m not surprised at your response. I think you’re lying. I saw a clip from Fox on the Daily Show and it did not include what you say.

    If you want to claim that Fox explained this live, please prove it.

    Your story is particularly bogus because the Fox reps in the two stories mentioned above did not defend themselves with what you claim. The Fox produced didn’t say “We explained it when we showed it” – he simply said “We did not say it was Wisconsin” which is not the same thing.

    Please stop lying.

  • Anonymous

    t is still available but if you had looked at the time to see that it
    was San Diego supporting Wisconsin you would have seen it for yourself.
    Of course you would have had to look for it and looked for the
    explanation and not looked for a way to point fingers at it without
    checking.

  • http://www.jt10000.com John Forrest Tomlinson

    ” The show explained that at the time ”

    Really? I did not know that. Can you point to transcript or video of them doing that?

    TIA.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Kenneth-Benson/100000014079669 Kenneth Benson

    Clearly, Tabacoff understood that Fox had no intention of making a “factually true” statement. Therefore, he and Fox are off the hook.

  • Anonymous

    Brilliant of Jim Romenesko to juxtapose the reports of the Badger Herald and the Daily Cardinal.

  • http://www.facebook.com/charley.stough Charles Stough

    I am convinced. Fox has convinced me. And under Fox’s brand of ethics, I can cover our next Ladies Sodality Quilting Bee with tape of mechanized infantry in Tienanmen Square and I’m clean as long as the crawl doesn’t say Ladies Sodality Quilting Bee. Wow! Who knew journalism was this easy!?

  • Anonymous

    Believable, but still feeble. It wasn’t necessary to use a generic protest tape. Wisconsin tape was available. All the networks pull this kind of stunt, but there is still no excuse for it.

  • Anonymous

    This is getting moronic. The palm tree bit was of a sympathy protest to the Wisconsin protest that took place in San Diego and had palm trees in the background. The show explained that at the time and multiple times since but evidently some journalists cannot read and so they are trying to make it a big deal.

  • http://twitter.com/micahuetricht Micah Uetricht

    The point was not that Fox was out-and-out lying with the palm tree footage–if you watch the clip, they slyly change the caption from Madison to a generic union protest. But the footage was extremely manipulative, clearly intended to tie the shoving and shouting from California to the peaceful protest in Wisconsin, when there was nothing of the sort happening in Madison.

  • Nicholas

    So, by their explanation Fox could have shown film clips of polar bears mating while their on-air people discussed the Wisconsin protests and that would have been OK. After, all, nobody on air said the polar bears were screwing in Wisconsin, right?

  • http://www.facebook.com/john.burik John Burik

    What’s disappointing — tho’ not surprising — is I never hear Fox admit goofs. Even a half-hearted acknowledgment, “Yes, I can see how that could be misleading. We’ll do better in the future.” As one NBC producer recently said about Trump (paraphrased): That’s just Fox being Fox.