Rachel Maddow received a lesson in journalism for a report that she shared with her viewers on MSNBC chastising Fox Business for claiming that cheap gas prices were bad for the economy.
The only problem with Maddow’s report: Fox Business contributor Stuart Varney was actually debunking the idea, not supporting it. Maddow had seen a screen cap from the segment that read, “Cheap Gas Hurts Economy?”
She then shared that with viewers and launched into a monologue where she made fun of the station as if it were supportive of the idea. But as Varney points out, “had she watched 15 seconds” of the program, she would have seen that they were actually against the theory.
“Rachel Maddow took me on and she got it wrong,” Varney said, adding that she had “turned to the classic style of the left: demagoguery without facts” and “twisting the truth” to fit an agenda.
“We posed the question to debunk it. She didn’t care to take time to notice that very important detail,” Varney said prior to playing the incriminating clip from Maddow’s show. “If Maddow watched just 15 seconds of the segment she showed so briefly on her program she would have known we were reciting a Wall Street Journal article that raised the premise of low gas prices hurting the economy. And we quickly dismissed that premise.”
Varney added that Maddow “resorts to cheap tricks to rally her lefty viewers.”
“Fox is an easy target and I was her latest prey,” he said. “But she got it wrong, and was lazy when she did it.”
Here’s the segment from Varney’s show.
http://youtu.be/f6DPYMNpasI
As you can see in the above video, Varney not only calls out Maddow for the reporting but he shares several examples where he and his guests actually act as “cheerleaders” for the falling gas prices.
To date, Maddow has not responded to the oversight, but we’ll keep you posted when or if she releases a statement or retraction.
What do you think about the mistake, readers? Was it, in fact, “lazy” reporting? Share your thoughts in our comments section.
[Image via Juli Hansen / Shutterstock.com ]