Fox News responds

The network blames "poor judgment" for the description of Michelle Obama as "Obama's baby mama."

Published June 12, 2008 7:26PM (EDT)

Well, the post I put up Wednesday night about the Fox News chyron that referred to Michelle Obama as "Obama's baby mama" has gotten a lot of attention from bloggers and the media. (More attention than I expected, frankly, not that I'm complaining.) Now, Fox News has responded to the outrage it has heard about the description.

The network released a short statement from its senior vice president of programming, Bill Shine. It reads, "A producer on the program exercised poor judgment in using this chyron during the segment."

Both the Politico's Michael Calderone and Mediabistro's TVNewser blog report that Fox staffers were disturbed by what happened. "A Fox staffer said that others internally were bothered" by the description, Calderone says, while TVNewser says, "TVNewser hears higher ups were furious, while tipsters say the producer was attempting to be 'cute' by referencing the movie of the same title."

A Fox spokeswoman did not respond to our requests for comment.


By Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.

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2008 Elections Barack Obama Fox News Michelle Obama War Room