On Wednesday afternoon, CNN and several other news outlets incorrectly reported that officials had arrested a suspect in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings. CNN described the alleged perpetrator only as a “dark skinned individual,” and host Wolf Blitzer also pushed reporter John King to say whether the suspect had an accent.

Less than an hour later, CBS tweeted, “JUST IN: Man sought as possible suspect is WHITE MALE, wearing white baseball cap on backwards, gray hoodie and black jacket.”

In repose to one or perhaps both of the reports, the FBI released a scathing statement cautioning journalists not to jump to conclusions:

Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack. Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.

Here are some examples of the other “unintended consequences” wrought by journalists’ misinformation in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings:

Journalists hounded a victim and his neighbors. After the attack, authorities spoke with a Saudi national who was a witness to and victim of the bombings. But several media outlets mistakenly reported that he was a “person of interest” or a “suspect,” and the New York Post even bragged about this “world-beating scoop.”

The Wall Street Journal reported more bombs. On Monday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that police had found five additional explosive devices, on top of the two that had been deployed. It was only minutes later that federal authorities dismissed that report as inaccurate.

The New York Post gave an inflated death count. As the country braced for what could have been even more tragic numbers of casualties, the New York Post tried to rush to be first to report the news. This led them to incorrectly inform the country “there are at least 12 dead,” a number they later defended that count, four times the actual number of fatalities, by saying, “a law-enforcement source told The Post it could be as high as 12.”

There are plenty of good things that can come out of real-time news reports in the wake of a tragedy, even if some of those reports prove wrong. But when the incident involves terror felt at a national level, inaccurate reports can terrorize the community even further. The predisposition of news organizations to place blame at the feet of Muslims, Arabs, or any given “dark skinned individual” can lead to false reports, unnecessary suspicions, and the accusation of a group of people, writ large, with no specifics to identify the real suspect.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) battled Fox News host Rick Folbaum over the bipartisan Senate proposal to expand background checks to firearms purchased at gun shows and online on Friday, feverishly debunking the network’s claims that the measure will lead to a national gun registry or infringe on the constitutional rights of gun owners.

Asking questions that appeared to be lifted directly from the National Rifle Association, Folbaum demanded to know why Manchin and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) were offering an amendment to the Senate’s comprehensive gun safety bill that “punishes law abiding citizens” and coule lead to the establishment of a national database of gun owners. The West Virginia senator pushed back against query, explaining that the measure closes loopholes in the background check system and keeps firearms out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.

“Rick, all I would say is please read the bill,” Manchin pleaded and accused opponents of using “scare tactics” and lying to Americans:

Under the Manchin-Toomey measure, individuals who buy firearms at gun shows or online would have to undergo a background check that would be recorded with a federal firearm licensed dealer. Personal transfers would be exempt.

The bill also outlaws a national gun registry in three different places and would charge anyone who builds a national database of gun ownership with a felony and up to 15 years of imprisonment.

Advocates and opponents of marriage equality rallied at the steps of the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning, as the nine justices heard arguments about California’s Proposition 8 — a 2008 voter-approved initiative that prohibits gay and lesbian couples from marrying. The hearing comes on the heels of growing public support for same-sex marriage and marks the first time the nation’s highest court considered the issue.

But unfortunately, viewers of Fox News may have missed the story. The conservative news network largely ignored the historic hearing for most of the morning, choosing instead to focus on the developments in the Amanda Knox case.

A ThinkProgress analysis of Fox programming from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM found that the network devoted more than twice as much time (41 minutes) covering the Italian Supreme Court overturning the acquittal of Knox than it did to the ongoing public protests and hearings going on at home (19 minutes):

Fox News has a habit of ignoring pro-LGBT news that does not appeal to the conservative base. For instance, the network downplayed Sen. Rob Portman’s (R-OH) embrace of marriage equality, offered slim coverage to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the passage of New York’s historic same-sex marriage law.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex unions.

*A TV Eyes search of CNN and MSNBC reveals that both networks devoted more coverage to marriage equality than they did to Knox.

On Monday afternoon, Fox News ran a segment suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security is buying up large quantities of ammunition to prevent law-abiding Americans from defending themselves. The story came two days after the DHS justified the purchases in a letter to lawmakers and Fox itself dismissed the theory as a conspiracy in its signature nightly news broadcast.

Conservative websites — including Alex Jones’ Info Wars — have been buzzing for months about DHS’ efforts to allegedly buy-up 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition to exacerbate shortages and disarm Americans in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting.

A number of Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Doug LaMalfa (CA), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), have written letters to DHS asking “whether the purchases are part of a deliberate attempt to restrict supply to the American people” and on Monday Fox News’ America Live hosted LaMalfa to discuss his concerns:

MEGYN KELLY (HOST) Is the government buying up bullets to use against us? Are you one of those who believes that?

LAMALFA: Well, that might be reaching a little far at this point. We’ve asked the questions of DHS. What is the reasoning behind doing this? And when you talk to your constituents out there across my area and across the whole country there is an extreme shortage of ammunition as it is now. And when they hear a story like this, is this what’s contributing to us not being able to get ammunition for our sporting or protection or what have you. And we’ve asked questions of dhs what are your procurement standards here and why are you doing it this way and we’re hearing well, it’s over a five-year period and buying it in bulk, okay. We might be able to appreciate that, but it is a heck of a lot of rounds of ammunition and for some very dubious-sounding reasons.

The segment seems misplaced, however, since DHS responded to lawmakers’ questions about the purchase on Friday and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer dismissed the story as a conspiracy theory that night on Special Report. Watch the two side-by-side:

In its letter to lawmakers, the agency explained that it regularly purchases ammunition in bulk to save money and noted that “the 1.6 billion number was misleading because the language of DHS’s purchase said it would need ‘up to’ a certain amount.” That letter came a month after DHS offered a detailed justification of its purchase to Coburn in February, who later claimed that he was satisfied with the reply.

As Krauthammer explained to Fox News viewers on March 22, “Senator Coburn who isn’t exactly a liberal said number one the amount of ammunition is less than in previous years. Number two, it’s about a tenth of the ceiling that the DHS has allowed,” he said, adding, that the ammunition is “being used for the training of agents like the border security agents who have to go to the range a lot and stay sharp.”

“I hate to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, they’re gonna have to come up with something new and they will,” he concluded. Apparently, his fellow Fox News hosts and producers are still coming up short.

NBC is hyping an “interview,” to be aired Monday, with convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky. But what they don’t tell you is the interview wasn’t conducted by NBC. Rather, NBC is airing excerpts of an interview by John Ziegler, right-wing documentarian and propagandist. Ziegler has been publicly skeptical of the charges against Sandusky, who was convicted of 45 counts of child sexual abuse, writing that at the time the grand jury was convened “the legal case against Jerry Sandusky was actually remarkably weak.”

Ziegler insists he is “not supportive” of Sandusky and does acknowledge he engaged in “criminal behavior.”

The interview being aired by NBC as news content is part of a larger documentary called “The Framing of Joe Paterno.” On his website, Ziegler lambasts the Freeh Report of the Penn State scandal, which concluded Joe Paterno “failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade.” Ziegler attacks the testimony of assistant coach Mike McQueary who said he observed Sandusky sexually assaulting a child in the shower. Ziegler says “the evidence indicates that McQueary did not witness an assault, but rather a botched ‘grooming’”

Previously Ziegler has produced films such as “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected” and “Blocking The Path to 9/11,” a film defending an error riddled mini-series seeking to pin blame on Bill Clinton for the 9/11 attacks.

Ziegler is also defending Reno Saccoccia, the Steubenville football coach who “knew about the rape of a 16-year-old girl by two of his players, but didn’t say a word about it to school administrators or local law enforcement.” On his website, Ziegler asserts Saccoccia is “not culpable” and reveals he has been “advising him for the past several months on how to handle the media firestorm.”

Scott Paterno publicly opposes Ziegler’s efforts to defend his late father. He wrote on Twitter, “If John had a credible way to exonerate Dad, why would we oppose it? Think about that.”

One child advocacy group has called on NBC to cancel the segment featuring the Sandusky interview.

During a roundtable discussion on Friday, Fox News’ Lou Dobbs agreed with a network contributor who argued that Americans need to access military-style assault weapons to protect themselves from an Iranian invasion.

“What scares the hell out of me we have a president, as we were discussing during break, that wants to take away our guns, but yet he wants to attack Iran and Syria. So if they come and attack us here, we don’t have the right to bear arms under this Obama administration,” Angela McGlowan, a former lobbyist for News Corp., said in the midst of a conversation about violence in Syria.

Dobbs quickly agreed, adding, “we’re told by Homeland Security that there are already agents of Al Qaeda here working in this country. Why in the world would you not want to make certain that all American citizens were armed and prepared? ” Watch it:

The panel also falsely argued that widespread gun ownership in Israel has helped prevent terrorist attacks, though access to firearms is strictly limited to people who “can prove their professions or places of residence put them in danger.” Approximately “170,000 guns are licensed for private use in Israel,” while assault weapons are “banned for private ownership.”

[HT: MMFA]

Culture warrior and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly sounded the alarms on his show yesterday over the looming threat being posed by secularists towards…the Easter bunny.

O’Reilly, perhaps best known for his annual winter jeremiads on the imminent destruction of Christmas, explained to his audience that “secular progressives” are seeking to destroy such holy biblical figures as grown men in bunny costumes so they can legalize marijuana and allow abortions on demand:

O’REILLY: Secular progressives are running wild with President Obama in the White House. They feel unchained, liberated, and they’re trying to diminish any form of religion. The goal is to marginalize religious opposition to secular programs. For example, in Canada and China a woman can have an abortion for any reason at any time. Secular progressives want that here. But traditional forces in America are in opposition. Therefore in this country, you can’t terminate a baby about to be born without a damn good reason. And if you do abort a late term baby, you could be charged with murder. SPs hate that. In Scandanavia, there are laws that say you cannot criticize minorities and if you do, you could be arrested. Secular progressives want laws like that here. Also the legalization of drugs, well under way in many places, and that is a secular cause. So, if the far left can marginalize Santa and the Easter bunny, of they can tell the children those symbols are obsolete and unnecessary, they then set the stage for a totally secular society in the future.

Forgetting for a minute that religiously-affiliated lawmakers are actually imposing tougher abortion laws around the country, that nobody is pushing for a law to criminalize free speech, and that legalizing drugs is far from a secular progressive cause, there is simply no “war on Easter.” O’Reilly points to a handful of small community centers and elementary schools that are hosting “spring egg hunts,” sometimes with a “spring bunny” emceeing the festivities. Nowhere to be found is the word “Easter,” laments O’Reilly, fearful that the nation’s six year olds will one day forget the religious symbolism of crawling around a grassy schoolyard on all fours searching for chocolate-filled plastic eggs. Each of the schools highlighted by O’Reilly has off the day following Easter Sunday, an opportunity for parents to teach their children about the significance of the holiday and a luxury rarely afforded to the practitioners of any other religion in the country.

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham joined O’Reilly to discuss this latest atrocity, and both agreed that the fault belongs to the nation’s “traditional forces,” who aren’t doing enough, in their estimation, to fight back against the rise of secularism and the persecution of religious Christians. It’s a bold statement coming from two people who have a history of being the chief persecutors towards people of other faiths.

HT: Mediaite

Thanks to Congressional gridlock, automatic budget cuts took effect 14 days ago, threatening 700,000 jobs and gutting funds for vital programs in housing assistance, early childhood education, disaster relief, and national security. Secret Service staffing was also impacted, prompting the cancellation of White House tours last week. Republicans immediately attacked the decision as a political move designed to turn the public against the sequester and 14 Republican senators signed a letter demanding information.

The media has also latched on to preserve the White House tours, while largely ignoring other much more devastating sequester cuts. As Ari Melber of The Nation pointed out on Wednesday, there are 12,000 news stories concerning White House tours and less than 1,000 about the sequester’s impact on housing assistance programs, which disproportionately affect low-income Americans.

ThinkProgress examined this trend on three major cable news networks — Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC — since March 6. White House tours were mentioned 33 times as often (Fox News had 163 segments, CNN had 59, and MSNBC had 42) as mentions of other sequester impacts hitting the poor. Any discussion of sequestration’s steep cuts to housing assistance, food assistance programs, and Head Start early education was virtually nonexistent on all 3 networks in the same time frame. Fox News mentioned Head Start three times, ignoring housing and food stamps entirely; MSNBC mentioned Head Start 4 times, food stamps once, and did not cover housing assistance cuts at all. CNN stayed completely silent on all three issues:

While covering budget cuts, cable news channels have also largely avoided discussing military tuition assistance programs, which were suspended by the Marine Corps and the Army shortly after sequestration. CNN and MSNBC each mentioned the cuts to tuition assistance once since March 6, while Fox News took the lead with 11 segments.

The media’s silence on the most brutal sequester cuts is well in line with the fourth estate’s normal approach to poverty. During the 2012 presidential campaign, just .2 percent of campaign coverage by major TV, radio, and print outlets addressed poverty in any substantive way. More recently, the media mostly ignored the effects of spending cuts in the so-called “fiscal cliff” at the end of 2012, preferring to discuss tax hikes instead.

In response to the highly publicized backlash over White House tours, Obama is now signalling some tours may resume.

Right-wing funders and business industrialists David and Charles Koch may purchase the Tribune Company newspapers, which include the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and the Los Angeles Times. The brothers are “interested in the clout they could gain through the Times’ editorial pages,” the Hollywood Reporter notes. Responding to the report, a spokesperson for Koch told the website that the brothers are “constantly exploring profitable opportunities in many industries and sectors”:

Missy Cohlmia, a spokeswoman for Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC, issued the following statement to THR: “As an entrepreneurial company with 60,000 employees around the world, we are constantly exploring profitable opportunities in many industries and sectors. So, it is natural that our name would come up in connection with this rumor. We respect the independence of the journalistic institutions referenced in today’s news stories, but it is our long-standing policy not to comment on deals or rumors of deals we may or may not be exploring. ”

The Los Angeles Weekly was the first to report that the Kochs could be mulling the purchase of the newspaper assets, which make up $623 million of the company’s $7 billion holdings.

The Koch brothers own Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in America, and bankroll a network of Tea Party groups and Republican political war chests.

In 2012, the brothers spent millions to defeat President Obama and even sent mailers to employees urging them to support Mitt Romney and other conservative candidates.

Fox News host Bill Hemmer tried to shout down Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD) criticism of the GOP budget on Tuesday morning by loudly reading from Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) editorial promoting the newly-released Republican plan.

Hemmer dismissed Van Hollen’s claims that Ryan’s proposal would benefit the richest Americans while severely underfunding programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps as “talking points” and claimed that the plan would make the government “healthier.”

Then, as Van Hollen explained that steep cuts in spending would undermine job growth, Hemmer proceeded to angrily read from Ryan’s Wall Street Journal opinion piece. Watch it:

At the end of the contentious segment, Van Hollen criticized Hemmer, saying, “reading a Wall Street Journal article by Paul Ryan on the air, I mean, I don’t see how that is a fair and balanced approach, but I appreciate you being honest.”