Fox News Is Forced To Apologize After Completely False Baltimore Shooting Report

Fox News’s Shepard Smith was forced to apologize to viewers after a Fox News report that a Baltimore protester had been shot by police was proven to be completely false.

Fox News correspondent Mike Tobin claimed that he saw Baltimore Police shoot and kill a protester as he was running away.

The Baltimore Police tweeted:

Shep Smith, who seems to be Fox News’s dedicated apology guy, said:

Sounds like what happened is we screwed up. Mike Tobin thought he saw somebody get shot. And there was a gun and a patient on a stretcher and there is would a woman who said she saw the cop gun him down and there’s going to be violence and all the rest of that. And what we have is nothing. And the truth is, according to police, there is no gunshot victim.

….

I’m now in correction mode and we apparently were wrong,” Smith went on to say. “Unless there’s new information that comes forward, all the information now points to there was a guy running down the street, gun fell in the street, gun went off, guy was taken into custody. He complained that he was injured or something. They put him in an ambulance and, out of an abundance of caution, the police are now telling us, they took him to the hospital. Nobody has been shot. No police officer has pulled the trigger. And on behalf of Mike Tobin and the rest of our crew there and he rest of us at Fox News, I am very sorry for the error and glad we were able to correct it quickly.

The fact that the completely false Fox News report could have set off another riot should not be lost on anyone. Cable news rushes to stories and gets things wrong all of the time. The fact that Fox’s correspondent didn’t bother to verify what he thought he saw before he put it on live television is a real problem.

Fox News has demonstrated why they can’t and shouldn’t ever be trusted. Beyond their obvious bias, the fact is that Fox News has a history of getting things wrong. Fox doesn’t get any credit for quickly correcting their mistake because it was a mistake that never should have been made.