WNYW "Disappointed" In News Anchor's Expletive
Anastos to issue on-air apology
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/17/2009 5:08:49 PM
Fox's WNYW New York says it is disappointed in an F-bomb dropped by a news anchor Wednesday night, and will make an on-air apology as well.Ernie Anastos, 10 p.m. anchor, made the slip in banter with the station's weather anchor. The clip went viral and drew this response Thursday from VP and GM Lew Leone. "We are disappointed with Ernie's comment on the air last night. He will apologize for his use of inappropriate language tonight during FOX 5 News at 10 p.m."
The timing was a bit unfortunate, coming the same day Fox was filing a court brief opposing the FCC's indecency finding against Fox for expletives dropped in an awards show.
It was clearly beyond WNYW and Fox's bounds, but as far as the FCC is concerned, Anastos' comment was within the rules since it was after 10 p.m., when broadcasters are theoretically able to say or show anything short of outright obscenity.
Talkback
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Oh yes, any dissension toward Obama is racist. YOU GET OVER IT, BIGOT!
John Q Public - 9/18/2009 9:49:59 AM EDT -
Apology accepted Ernie...move on Fox and report the real news.
martin alianelli - 9/18/2009 6:59:42 AM EDT -
Ernie's error was pure albeit unwitting comedy, and he has little for which to apologize. The absurdity of his comment, both substantively and in the context of newscast banter, identifies it as simple misstatement, not an intentional or premeditated insult to the collective mores of the audience. For that kind of intentional assault on social decency--the kind for which Fox News should be calling for mass apologies--one must attend one of these right-wing rallies that exhorts the overthrow of our freely elected government with expressly racist invective against a black President. Ernie's gift for misspeaking is hilarious, but surely not intentional. Weigh in against the bigots, Fox, not poor Ernie and his malaprop.
Steven Fulk - 9/17/2009 5:53:36 PM EDT
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