Pretending to be a witness to the crash of flight MH17, the man called MSNBC’s Krystal Ball (Really?) a “dumbass” on live TV after she failed to pick up on his description of the incident.
“Let’s turn now to an MSNBC exclusive. U.S. Staff Sergeant Michael Boyd, he is at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine and he says he saw a missile in the air hit the plane, he is on the phone with us,” Ball said.
(Caller) “Well I was looking out the window and I saw a projectile flying in the sky and it would appear the plane was shot down by a blast of wind from Howard Stern’s ass,” the caller said.
Ball didn’t catch the joke.
“So it would appear the plane was shot down, can you tell us anything more from your military training of sort of missile system that may have been coming from?” Ball said in response.
“Well you’re a dumbass aren’t ya?” the caller said.
Ball, still confused, said “I’m sorry sir?” before pausing for a moment and saying they were taking a break.
This type of thing happens more often than viewers realize or know. Here is a prime example of incompetence on the part of news management and staff. Watch and listen carefully as the anchor, without listening and thinking, reads her scripted question from a prompter. The fault here is the producer, managing editor and the head of news. Most of these anchors are hired because of their on camera appearance/presence and nothing more. Most of them have no clue about what's going on locally or around the world. These news organizations are not held accountable and answer to no one. All news management knows when a person like this calls in and claims to be a witness or whatever it may be is that this is their chance to advance the story as an exclusive and they go into a feeding frenzy. Here's how this happened. A guy calls in to a producer and BS's a line with details and a name and rank and allegedly what he witnessed which is believeable enough for tv news people. The managing editor and/or producer run to the head of news, or maybe the managing editor calls the shot, and says tell Krystal we on the phone an eyewitness to the plane shoot down and give her some questions and get him on right now and let's bury the compeition. We'll super it with an MSNBC News "Exclusive" and punch it hard. No one took the time to check out this guy, verify anything or ask him anything that would show his lack of credibility. Most of the newsrooms are staffed with young folks who have little to no experience in news or life so they fall for this type of stunt. I've seen it and fought it many times in my career in news tv news management. The news organization's defense is this can happen from time to time but look at all the awards we have for coverage. Awards are equivilent to fraternity members slapping eachother on the backs and saying great job. Awards don't help a news gathering organization's reputation. The ratings/viewership numbers do. I think if everyone will check MSNBC's ratings, they're not something to write home about. Another example of the media's irresponsibility and failure to police itself. This mindset is being taught in the journalism classes in colleges and universities.
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