Fox News retracts unfounded story about DNC staffer's death

Fox News backing away from the Seth Rich Conspiracy. Looks like even they can't even tolerate it:

Days after it was debunked, Fox News retracted on Tuesday an unfounded story it ran last week alleging that the 2016 death of a Democratic National Committee staffer may have been a murder in retaliation for communicating with the website WikiLeaks.

www.politico.com...

Further:

The network released a statement Tuesday afternoon saying that the May 16 story “was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting.”

“Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed,” the statement said. “We will continue to investigate this story and will provide updates as warranted.”

The statement did not mention Hannity, who as recently as Tuesday afternoon had continued to share tweets about it. On Monday evening, he shared a link to a Daily Beast story reporting that other Fox News employees were dismayed by his embrace of the unfounded story and indicated that he had no regrets. “Very interesting,” he wrote. “My heart is not troubled in the least.”

Rich’s family thanked Fox for retracting the story in a statement sent through a spokesman on Tuesday.

www.politico.com...

I guess Hannity gets a pass considering he's what, a pundit? Seth's family appears happy this Fox news is backing out. I've read into this conspiracy and it's pure speculation as far as I'm concerned. Seems more of a distraction than an actual story in my opinion.

Hasn't been a good few years for Fox. Rodger Ailes, O'Reilly, Meghan Fox and Gretta leaving, lawsuits.

a reply to: Southern Guardian

At least fox can admit it.

originally posted by: thesaneone
a reply to: Southern Guardian

At least fox can admit it.

As if they have a choice? Either that or they face a potential lawsuit and backlash.

Not a hard choice.

a reply to: thesaneone

I saw plenty of people hopping on board with this story around the forums, I wonder where they are now? Can they admit that they are just as susceptible to fake news as anyone else seeing as how they believed in a fake story here?

originally posted by: Southern Guardian

originally posted by: thesaneone
a reply to: Southern Guardian

At least fox can admit it.

As if they have a choice? Either that or they face a potential lawsuit and backlash.

Not a hard choice.

So they did have a choice.

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1
a reply to: thesaneone

I saw plenty of people hopping on board with this story around the forums, I wonder where they are now? Can they admit that they are just as susceptible to fake news as anyone else seeing as how they believed in a fake story here?

Fake or not yet proven?

Controlled Opposition + Controlled Confirmation all at the same time !!

a reply to: 3NL1GHT3N3D1

Most of us did not "hop on board" this story just because of Fox News. We have been researching this since last year.

Just because Fox caved to pressure does not make the information false.

And also:
Is the Seth Rich/Wikileaks connection the smoke screen to the real story?

a reply to: thesaneone

It is a choice, but not a hard one.

Either that or face a backlash or a lawsuit. The story is clearly unfounded.

Not hard to understand. You make it as if they're admitting this out of some moral obligation or something.

Fox is garbage, they always have been. If they reported this without proper vetting, I am not gonna just let them go with a "My bad".

This is inexcusable.

However, the claim that this has been debunked is laughable.

It has been debunked because Fox couldn't verify the info their anonymous source cited. The same could be said of every single anti Trump article citing anonymous sources. Its just that the MSM does not care about verifying anti trump stories.

This is supposedly a letter sent from Seth's family to Fox news:

twitter.com...

a reply to: Grambler

However, the claim that this has been debunked is laughable.

When even Fox news has to back out of this story you would have to have your head in the sand to continue running with it.

originally posted by: Southern Guardian
a reply to: Grambler

However, the claim that this has been debunked is laughable.

When even Fox news has to back out of this story you would have to have your head in the sand to continue running with it.

Clearly you didn't understand what I wrote.

I agree the story is garbage in that Fox did not verify their source. The same is true of every anti trump anonymous story.

So for a venue that publishes these garbage stories to point out that another venue that does the same is garbage is laughable.

a reply to: Southern Guardian

Why would they retract a story when they simply mentioned the possibility that there may have been foul play?

Not sure whats wrong with exploring alternative theories.

Thats kind of the point of this site...

a reply to: Grambler

Because these Fox reporters didn't vet their source, every story critical of Trump citing an anonymous source is also unvetted? That doesn't sound very reasonable to me.

And what about the Rod Wheeler shenanigans? Rod Wheeler is claiming that the same reporters also are the source of the false claims that he made to a Fox affiliate and later to Sean Hannity. I smell a conspiracy at Fox to fabricate a story.

People should be fired.

a reply to: gladtobehere

That's not what the story was about. The story cited an anonymous "federal investigator" and made several claims. The original story has been removed from the Fox site. A Daily Caller (Tucker Carlson's news website) article based on the Fox reporting has also been removed. Washington Examiner has also cleaned up theirs.

I'm sure it's lurking around somewhere. Breitbart still has a post with a big excerpt but the link to Fox is dead. Anyway, the claims were:

- The FBI got ahold of Seth Rich's personal laptop within 96 hours of his murder.
- The FBI found communications with the conveniently deceased Gavin MacFadyen proving that Seth Rich had reached out to WikiLeaks.
- The FBI had evidence of 44k+ emails being sent by Seth Rich.

This story broke on Fox 5 with Rod Wheeler, an infrequent Fox News contributor with a checkered past who had made up other information in a segment on Bill O'Reilly's show back in 2007 — for which he and O'Reilly later apologized.

The following day, the Fox News story was published.

Just as this was unfolding, Fox 5 edited the original story saying that Wheeler had backtracked on his on the record, on video statements. Multiple other news outlets reported from their own contacts that there was no FBI investigation at all. The family spokesman came out and said that none of it was true, the family sent a C&D to Wheeler, etc.

The last I read from Wheeler, he was claiming that his actual source was the author of the now retracted Fox News story. Somewhere in there Wheeler found time to spread some disinfo on Hannity.

I think that about covers the bulk of it. Now after three days, Fox is finally retracting the story. That's not enough in my opinion. They need to explain what happened. Their retraction is leaving far too much wiggle room for people to pretend that the story is probably true but because some i wasn't dotted or t crossed, they yanked it.

By all accounts, it would seem that the story was actually complete bs.

a reply to: thesaneone

The article that was retracted? It was untrue and thus retracted as false, so yes it has been proven to be fake news.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: Grambler

Because these Fox reporters didn't vet their source, every story critical of Trump citing an anonymous source is also unvetted? That doesn't sound very reasonable to me.

And what about the Rod Wheeler shenanigans? Rod Wheeler is claiming that the same reporters also are the source of the false claims that he made to a Fox affiliate and later to Sean Hannity. I smell a conspiracy at Fox to fabricate a story.

People should be fired.

I don't disagree that people should be fired. This does reek of manufacturing evidence fro a pre planned story.

To your other point, it has nothing to do with Fox vetted their source, independent of that the stories with unnamed sources are garbage.

Remember when Russia hacked the power grid?

Remember when Trump moved that bust of MLK?

How about those russian hookers peeing on Trump?

Some news sources reported those stories as fact without doing any vetting themselves. They merely repeated what other news agencies said.

But I will say if Fox straight up manufactured this source, that is worse than just being fooled by someone not properly vetted.

a reply to: BlueAjah

Yet if the shoe was on CNN'so foot you'd be saying how you told us so and how they can't be trusted.

Double standards everywhere, give Fox a pass but have your pitchfork ready for whenever any other media outlet does it.

Not very "fair and balanced" if you ask me, I think you'd fit well working at Faux News.

Fox news supported this conspiracy story only because of the political hit it may have been on the democrats.


When fox and Alex Jones types( now that Alex is nothing but a right-wing big mouth )support conspiracies that's only when they think political right-wing dogma is behind it.