Letters from NYC

MSM gets it wrong again

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger does not want to destroy the moon.

A U.S. political commentator has admitted he failed to check his facts when he erroneously reported on the MSNBC cable news network last month that Schwarzenegger had jokingly advocated doing away with the moon.

In one of the stranger mea culpas from a major U.S. news outlet in recent years, the commentator, Joe Scarborough, a former congressman, acknowledged on Friday that the governor's purported lunar outburst on the nationally syndicated radio show of Howard Stern was actually a spoof, something he was unaware of.

Citing a British newspaper, Scarborough had quoted Schwarzenegger on the air as saying: "If we get rid of the moon, women, whose menstrual cycles are governed by the moon, will not get (pre-menstrual syndrome). They will stop bit%$ing and whining."

Scarborough chided Schwarzenegger for insensitivity, saying: "Hey, governor, way to make 50 percent of California's voting population turn frigid toward you.

"I don't know how it works in Austria, but let me tell you something, friend. Jokes about such matters, (are) not laughing subjects to women in America."

It turned out the remarks Scarborough attributed to the Austrian-born governor were actually made by a Schwarzenegger impersonator who regularly appears on Stern's show as part of a running call-in gag.

Eleven days later, Scarborough admitted on the air that he had been duped and apologized to viewers and Schwarzenegger "for my terrible mistake."

"By quoting erroneous information from that (newspaper) article, without checking it out ourselves, we, too, got pulled into that hoax," Scarborough said.

A spokeswoman for the governor, Margita Thompson, said her office notified MSNBC of Scarborough's faux pas the day after its April 25 broadcast, noting that some Democrats in the state Assembly had been circulating the erroneous comments attributed to the Republican governor as fact.

MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said the original message from Schwarzenegger's office was not passed along immediately through proper channels. "As soon as Joe and his producer were made aware (of the mistake) he made the correction."

Posted by Michele at May 11, 2005 09:32 AM