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Steubenville rape case

Media Attack Fox for Airing Teenage Rape Victim’s Name, Ignores That CNN, MSNBC, Others Did To



Always looking to find some reason to smear Fox News, the website Raw Story slammed the network for airing the name of a 16-year-old rape victim in a March 18 broadcast of America's Newsroom. But in its zeal to slap Fox, the website neglected to note that other news outlets did the same thing.

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Just before noon on March 18, Raw Story reported that during Fox reporter Mike Tobin's segment on the guilty verdicts in the Steubenville rape case that morning, the name of the victim was broadcast without being censored. In its original piece, though, Raw Story did not point out that several other mainstream media outlets also aired the victim's name and did so before Fox News did on Monday. It has been a long-standing, voluntary tradition that reporters redact the names of rape victims and once Raw Story's report began to circulate, several other websites jumped on the story to attack Fox for violating that sensible tradition. By 2 PM that day, Huffington Post jumped on the bandwagon to slam Fox for airing the name of the victim. Not long after that, the progressive site Think Progress also moved to attack Fox over the lapse as did the left-wing site Jezebel. But, by 4PM Mediaite posted that these Fox critics didn't bother to do their due diligence and look into the other media outlets that beat Fox to the punch of violating the no-disclosure tradition. Mediate found that both CNN, and MSNBC also aired the victim's name and did so before Fox did. So far, only two of the above mentioned Fox critics, Think Progress and Raw Story, added updates to their posts to reflect the truth.


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Warner Todd Huston -- Bio and Archives

Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.

He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.


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