Fox News media analyst Howie Kurtz slammed many in the mainstream media over their coverage of a major reporting failure at MSNBC.
Last week, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell admitted he made an “error in judgment” after airing a singled-sourced, unverified report that President Trump had loans co-signed by Russian oligarchs.
In response to the erroneous reporting, Eric Trump vowed that the Trump Organization will take legal action against MSNBC and Lawrence O'Donnell.
Despite all this, Kurtz said he found the media's coverage of the controversy lacking.
"I didn't read anything about 'major error, reckless error, retracted and apologized for by an MSNBC primetime host' in the New York Times, in the print edition of the Washington Post indeed much in the media sort of shrugged it off, as if it didn't happen," said Kurtz on Fox Nation's "Reality Check with David Webb."
Fox Nation host David Webb observed that there appears to be a double-standard in the mainstream media's coverage of their own shortfalls. Kurtz agreed, "If Fox News had made such a mistake, I think it would have been frontpage news and dissection and columns everywhere. So I think by and large the media are giving one of their own a pass here. That's why people like Eric Trump are at least considering legal action."
Kurtz also observed that MSNBC has not expressed regret over the O'Donnell report, and he suggested that O'Donnell's apology was driven by a desire to insulate MSNBC from legal liability.
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"It was shortly after the Trump attorneys sent those letters to NBC that O'Donnell went on Twitter and said he made an error in judgment and then a full-throated apology. The apology might enable him to say 'I don't have any malice, I thought it was right, it's not right, we quickly corrected', but I do think in the court of media opinion, he has gotten a very large pass," said Kurtz.
Lastly, Kurtz warned that mistakes in reporting are damaging to the reputations of all media outlets, "Every time that a major media organization makes a mistake of this magnitude -- with what was essentially reckless behavior -- it hurts the credibility of all of us..."
To see the full segment and for daily episodes of "Reality Check with David Webb", visit Fox Nation and join today.
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