Fox News' Shepard Smith issued a heartfelt apology to viewers Friday afternoon after the channel inadvertently broadcast live footage of a man shooting himself in the head.
During the afternoon broadcast, Fox News was covering a low-speed chase in Phoenix, Ariz., and cut to live footage of the suspect getting out of his vehicle and running erratically through a field. The cameras continued rolling, giving viewers a clear aerial view of the man eventually stopping, pulling a gun from his pocket, appearing to shoot himself in the head and falling over.
read more
On October 7, 1996, the "on" switch was thrown at the Fox News Channel — and the TV news universe hasn't been the same since. A one-hour special, Fox News Channel — 15 Years — Fair and Balanced (Friday, 10pm/ET; Saturday, 10pm/ET; and Sunday, 3pm/ET), will reflect on the rise of the cable news ratings leader. Among the Fox News veterans looking back is Special Report anchor Bret Baier, who opened the channel's Atlanta bureau in his apartment with just a fax machine and a cell phone in FNC's early days. The Biz recently talked with Baier, who became anchor of Special Report in 2009, about the anniversary, the channel's critics and his emergence as the face of Fox News in the Beltway.
read more
This week demonstrated that not everyone on TV is cynical. Mad Men's Don Draper finally came clean with his wife. A One Tree Hill investigation uncovered a cruel deception. Amazing Race's Mika had a panic attack. And it would take a real cynic to think that Shepard Smith wasn't being real in calling for more balance in Fox News Channel's political coverage. This Halloween, we're removing our masks and embracing genuine human emotion. Welcome to Top Moments: Cynicism-Free Edition.
read more
The balloon drama that transfixed the nation — and left viewers terrified at the grim possibilities — ended happily and a bit absurdly Thursday with the discovery that the young boy once thought to have been carried across the Colorado sky had never taken to the air.
Cable news channels followed a helium-filled balloon thought to carry the 6-year-old boy, whose family was featured last year on ABC's Wife Swap, and the coverage continued for hours. The balloon landed softly, with the aptly but bizarrely named Falcon Heene not inside. That led to endless vamping and filler as reporters and experts tried to guess where he was, whether he was alive and whether it might have been a hoax.
At one point CNN broke ...
read more
Dubious congratulations are in order: Ralph Nader became the first public figure to make a stupid and offensive public remark about our first African-American president, telling a Fox News affiliate that Barack Obama has to choose between being "Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations."
read more