Published: 2015 February 16 07:30:26 (15060 Views)
US President Barack Obama was labelled a rape suspect by a San Diego Fox TV affiliate after they showed his picture during a segment about a suspected rapist in KSWB-TV's Friday evening newscast.
The station, which is also known as Fox 5 San Diego, displayed a picture of Obama speaking at a microphone on top of a caption reading 'no charges' for about five seconds as anchor Kathleen Bade told the audience that local District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis' office had declined to press charges against a person of interest prosecutors had investigated in a rape case, the Raw Story blog reported.
The hour-long telecast didn't include a retraction of the visual linking between the Commander-in-Chief and a sexual assault case involving an alleged coercive sex act between San Diego State University students.
But station officials noticed the slip-up right away, Fox 5 San Diego assignment editor Mike Wille told the Times of San Diego.
"Yeah, there was an accident when they had an over-the-shoulder" Wille said. "It wasn't on purpose."
He added of the decision not to run a correction, "They really don't do that when it's a small thing like that."
But the screw-up by the station, which is a subsidiary of Chicago-based Tribune Broadcasting identified on the media conglomerate's website as operating in the 28th-largest media market in the country, may provoke outrage from President Obama's supporters as the mixup goes viral.
Liberal blog Daily Kos ran an item Sunday morning denouncing the mistake and the station's 'slanted' coverage of both Obama and Hillary Clinton in previous stories, along with contact information for the local TV station.