Fox News' Shep Smith and the WSJ' John Bussey chided the White House' attempts to smear the entire press over a retracted story on CNN's website and said they could learn something from how CNN handled their issue.
You don't often hear honest critical thinking from Fox News programs, but Shepard Smith takes the news seriously.
After watching Sarah Huckabee Sanders malign the entire press corps, Smith asked Bussey his thoughts.
Bussey said, "Unusual. More ring fencing from the White House against the press..."
Smith, "What are they doing? They need a foil"
Bussey, "It's a desire to build a wall around the WH, to limit inquiry into what they do, accountability.."
Bussey explained that CNN ran a story on their website and then retracted and apologized for it.
Shep continued, "They said they did not go through their procedures. It didn't make it through standards and practices they said, and it did not make it through editorial checking. Afterwards, three people resigned."
Bussey said, "This is what you want to have happen. You want a news organization where they find they got something that didn't go through the process properly. They retracted, and publicly stated, "we made a mistake."
Smith concurred, “It’s like an example of how to do it. (It's how to do it.) If you make a mistake, Journalism 101 says you admit your mistake, you correct it immediately, and you take corrective action.”
Then Bussey criticized Sanders for painting the entire media with her broad strokes.
Bussey said, "It gave her an opportunity to kinda seize on something and then extrapolate it out to the press in general - because this one instance, there was an error, clearly the entire press is wrong into its inquiry into activities of the White House with possible collusion with the Trump campaign and Russia."
He continued, "In fact, the CNN example is precisely what should have happen. They did it well. Scaramucci graciously accepted their apology."
"The White House could actually they did learn something from the CNN example. When they get something wrong, being forthright, saying we have something wrong..."
Shepard: "It depends on what your goal is."
Yes, if when one's goal is to obfuscate and manipulate your own set of facts, you get a Sarah Huckabee Sanders press conference and that was clearly her goal today.
When Judge Napolitano was suspended by Fox News over his GCHQ story, that Trump then used in a televised press conference, the judge didn't resign and wasn't fired by the Murdoch's.
You didn't hear a peep out of Trump or his PR flacks either afterwards.
Why didn't Trump call Fox and the judge, "fake news?"
