Butowsky paid Wheeler too.īoth Butowsky and Wheeler were longtime Fox News commentators. He picked Wheeler to work for the Riches. Butowsky was the one who suggested to the Riches that they should hire a private investigator. 3: Make sure each of your sources can stand on its own.Ī Dallas investment manager and Trump supporter named Ed Butowsky helped to orchestrate the Fox News story.

You can get people into a lot of trouble saying things they didn't mean to say.' 'It's very easy to lead a witness,' Bettag says. But there's zero evidence Wheeler ever said those words or gave permission for her to use them.Īnd if Zimmerman did invent the quotes, that's a big problem - regardless of whether Wheeler gave her the green light. NPR has seen a transcript of the texts from Zimmerman calling his attention to that email. And last month Wheeler sued Fox for defamation.īefore the story ran, Zimmerman sent Wheeler a draft with quotes she intended to attribute to him. In this case there was just one named source: Rod Wheeler, a private eye who had been hired on behalf of Rich's family to investigate his death.įox News quoted Wheeler confirming that Rich had shared emails with WikiLeaks. 2: Make sure your sources are saying what you think they're saying. Nor has it explained what went wrong.īut those conspiracy theories remained as groundless after the Fox story as before it. In the four months since its retraction, Fox News has not apologized for what it reported. That falls within the larger portfolio of the network's general counsel, Dianne Brandi.Īnd that gap is reflected in the response to the Rich story as well. Unlike the other networks or major newspapers, for example, Fox has no office or executive dedicated to standards and practices. Not so far at Fox, which stands apart journalistically from its competitors in many ways. When a story of this scale crumbles, most news organizations feel obligated to explain what happened and why. On Monday, lawyers for Fox News must submit court filings addressing how the network mishandled a story about the unsolved killing of a young Democratic Party staffer named Seth Rich.Īssuming Fox answers those questions in any detail, it would be the first time the network has done so publicly.įox News was compelled to retract the story, which involved presidential politics, international intrigue and a man's murder. Several months after Fox News retracted its story about the death of Seth Rich, the network has done nothing to explain what went wrong.

The seth material