New York Times media columnist writes today about the rarity of on-air corrections on TV news. He focuses on NBC’s misleading edit of police tapes in the Trayvon Martin case. The network investigated and took a number of steps to remedy the error, but never announced it on air.
What is it with television news and corrections? When the rest of the journalism world gets something wrong, they generally correct themselves. But network news acts as if an on-air admission of error might cause a meteor to land on the noggin of one of its precious talking heads. NBC used all of the powers at its disposal to amend the mistake, except the high-visibility airtime where the bad clip ran in the first place.
I wonder if Fox News will correct the misleading impression one of its announcers left by manufacturing a quote by Barack Obama related to his silver spoon remark.