A seemingly straightforward story about the eBay sale of a George Zimmerman oil painting got Fox News Latino into a bit of trouble, after the writer of the article maybe forgot to check on a couple of facts about Zimmerman’s trial.
As Jim Romensko first pointed out, the article contained this lede: “Bidding has closed on eBay for artwork created by George Zimmerman, the Florida gunman who killed a teenager and later took his own life following his conviction.”
Zimmerman, of course, is both still alive (hence his new oil painting hobby) and was found not guilty of murder after shooting teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida. Since his acquittal, Zimmerman has also been arrested and charged with felony aggravated assault and two misdemeanors after an incident in which he threatened his girlfriend with a shotgun (also, he’s gotten two speeding tickets).
This is one of the bigger flubs in recent Fox News history, though the network has been very, very wrong before: There was the time the network was duped by a satirical news story about President Obama saying he would use his own money to keep the International Museum of Muslim Cultures open during the government shutdown. There was the incident in which Fox News host Steve Doocy misquoted the President and then used the misquote to accuse him of taking a jab at Mitt Romney, an accusation that reverberated in several segments across the network’s shows. And, most significantly, Fox News (along with CNN) misreported that the Supreme Court had struck down Obamacare, when the opposite was true.
Fox News Latino has since fixed this latest error — without a correction.
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