Last week, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show caught Fox News' Sean Hannity running old footage of September Tea Party crowds in an attempt to make Michele Bachmann's smaller November Tea Party shindig appear to be more well-attended than it was. Is Fox up to the same tricks today? Faiz Shakir at ThinkProgress thinks so, and he pulls a segment that seems to tout the crowds that greeted Sarah Palin on the stump during the 2008 campaign as throngs that are gathering to purchase Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue.
In the clip below, watch as Fox anchor Gregg Jarrett describes "pictures just coming into us" as "huge crowds" that have amassed while Palin is "promoting her new book." The pictures that are supposedly "just coming in" are actually year-old video from the presidential campaign:
[WATCH]
For what it's worth, I think this appears to be little more than a momentary disconnect between newsreader and news producer than a conscious attempt to mislead. I am sure that Fox News is more than aware that crowds are mainly gathering today at a mall in Michigan, where Palin is expected to appear, and not at some rally that Palin presided over today. Of course, the fact that Fox was caught manipulating footage in a misleading manner is only going to spur further suspicions when things like this happen.
MSNBC has also been reporting on Palin's book signing all day today. It's not something that Fox is likely to have missed, and it looks a little something like this:
[WATCH]
UPDATE: Fox has released a statement:
"This was a production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn't alert the control room to update the video...There will be an on-air explanation during Happening Now on Thursday."
Mark Silva, writing for the Chicago Tribune's The Swamp blog, reports that "that it's highly like [sic] that serious disciplinary action will be taken for those responsible behind the scenes in the control room. News executives there consider this to have been a sloppy and unnecessary error.'
UPDATE, AGAIN: Fox aired an apology for the video mistake this afternoon:
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