The Hazards of Live TV: #25,107
NewsBusters’ Ken Shepherd writes that MSNBC’s Chris Jansing reported on a first tweet from Pope Benedict XVI. But, MSNBC showed a screen grab of something else entirely…
Jansing read off that tweet, but MSNBC producers showed on screen an account under the name @PopeBenedictXIV (first picture shown below), which would be Pope Benedict the 14th. The current bishop of Rome is Benedict the Sixteenth (XVI).
In truth, the Pope has no official, personal Twitter account.
To be fair to MSNBC, their producers may have been duped by a fake “Verified Account” listing in the heading of the @PopeBenedictXIV account.
Still one would expect MSNBC to know which account is the real Vatican account and which isn’t.
Question to Shepherd and NB: What exactly does this particular story have to do with “Exposing & Combating Liberal Media Bias”? The fake Pope account is a liberal front? Putting up the fake Pope account instead of the real Pope account was a clever way to embarrass the Pontiff? Sorry but I’m just not seeing how this fits in with your mission statement AT ALL. On the other hand I didn’t spot this and I should have so I do have to thank you for posting it even though it seems like a total non-sequitur to your core mission.
June 30, 2011 at 5:38 pm
– non-sequitur –
Exactly. Aside from Newsbusters doing Spud’s job, there’s really no point to this at all. It’s about making MSNBC look bad because they’re the ‘liberal’ news channel. and to counterpoint the gaffes on Fox.