The Hazards of Live TV: #25,131
FBN’s Adam Shapiro was down at Occupy Wall Street to do a live hit on The Willis Report. It didn’t go exactly as planned with the OWS protesters shouting Shapiro down with chants of “Fox News Lies” and Shapiro had to abandon the segment (later video showed him leaving the scene under minor Police protection from the OWS horde who apparently thought they’d won the “battle”). Willis was none too pleased with this and was visibly angry and defended FNC and its coverage of Occupy Wall Street as they were just “trying to cover the story like everyone else”. I thought Willis stated her case well and the OWS idiots came off looking like…well…idiots.
What followed this, and which I don’t have the video posted for technical reasons (it would take forever to convert something that big down from HD and upload to YouTube), was a disappointment. A three panel member discussion followed with everyone basically ridiculing, trashing, or otherwise not speaking in any sort of positive terms regarding Occupy Wall Street. Having gained the moral high ground by rightly complaining about the treatment of Shapiro, Willis and her panel subsequently gave up the moral high ground by playing down to Occupy Wall Street’s characterization of FNC/FBN…that they can’t get a fair shake from the channel. It’s hard to argue against that point when they can point to a 4-0 segment that looks like something of a setup.
Nobody came out looking good here. By rights FBN should have because Shapiro was the victim. But Willis and her panel fumbled that opportunity away…
Inside Cable News 
November 15, 2011 at 5:01 pm
4-0? Yeah it’s like an episode of Up with Hayes.
I guess they should have had two of the panelists argue in favor of shouting down journalists. 😉
November 15, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Gerri Willis is not a journalist “covering a story”. She has voiced her opinion about OWS vociferously on two occasions I’ve seen on FNC. She’s not “covering” this anymore that Erin Burnett did. The fact that she couldn’t be bothered to find one panelist not in the bag for Wall Street to balance her is embarrassing.
November 15, 2011 at 5:15 pm
I guess the court didn’t back the removal of the protesters and their tents since Fox News reported the court did back the eviction. 😉
November 15, 2011 at 5:49 pm
hard to make your way to moral high ground while slipping in OWS feces.
November 15, 2011 at 6:19 pm
I guess they should have had two of the panelists argue in favor of shouting down journalists.
You’d have a point except they didn’t talk about that except tangentially at the end. The rest of the time was spent talking about other aspects of OWS…none of it positive.
November 15, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Hey hey… let’s remember that not all the people involved with OWS are standard left-wing anti-FNC zombies. Maybe these folks were… but they (as well as anyone else who does something inappropriate and gets caught) aren’t the norm.
They just were upset that NYC isn’t honoring their free speech rights. And to show how serious they are about that, they took away someone else’s!
See! It makes sense if you don’t think about it.
November 16, 2011 at 8:51 am
[…] Watch (via Inside Cable News): […]
November 16, 2011 at 11:47 am
[…] caught a live shot on FBN last night from Zuccotti Park after OWS protesters were let back in — sans tents. Not […]
November 16, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Well, if FNC/FBN wouldn’t be acting like such partisan idiots when “reporting” on these protests, and selectively picking at what goes on there, they wouldn’t get shouted down as liars. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
By the way, it’s funny how Fox, and the robots who watch them, are so sensitive about criticism of how they do their reporting, but it was Fox news who was taking out full page ads of how the other networks covered the tea parties. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they are more thin skinned than ever.
November 18, 2011 at 9:27 am
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