Another outrage on Fox News Channel

Today, at the beginning of the 5:00 PM EDT hour on John Gibson’s program, Catherine Herridge read out loud, while the text was shown on the screen, Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s response to former FEMA Director Michael Brown’s congressional testimony yesterday referring to his “lies and misstatements under oath” as “appalling.” (I’m quoting from memory.)

Then, as she read other news items, I noticed that the graphic at the bottom of the screen read:
BIG STORY
LA GOVERNOR DECLINES TO
RESPOND TO BROWN’S ATTACKS

Seems to me like someone was asleep at the switch.  Actually, it’s worse than that.

Brown did not “attack” the governor in his testimony yesterday. He merely recited his and his staff’s contacts and attempted contacts with her and faulted himself for not being able to persuade her to order an evacuation of the New Orleans area sooner.

Brown did go on to say that the delay in ordering the evacuation, and the insufficiency of implementing the plan which the city and state had prepared for managing that evacuation, played a major role in exacerbating the subsequent problems of people trapped in their homes by rising floodwaters, overcrowding at the Superdome, and the wholly unplanned mob scene at the Morial Convention Center.

This doesn’t sound like an attack to me. And it certainly doesn’t sound like lies in the light of the facts as they have appeared so far.

This incident reminds me of the story about the candidate who was told by one of his supporters, “You’ve got to go and work the south end of the county, they’re telling lies about you down there.” And the candidate responded, “No, I have to go to the north end; they’re telling the truth about me up there.”