Fox 9: Sex Offender Story Accompanied by Footage of Obama Supporters

On Saturday night Fox 9 KMSP gave some unexpected publicity for Democratic Senator (and probable presidential candidate) Barack Obama: in a story about a convicted sex offender. About three seconds of video footage of Obama supporters accompanied a story read by anchor Tim Blotz about the conviction of school district worker Richard Rucker, who received a 24 year sentence for molesting two students.

KMSP’s news director, Bill Dallman, told Obarama.org that the station would run an apology during tonight’s newscast:

As News Director of KMSP, I can assure you this was an unfortunate error. We sincerely apologize. On Friday we changed to a new video server playback system and we encountered a few problems, however that is not an excuse. We are running a correction in our newscasts tonight, and apologizing once again to anyone who viewed this story. I would also add that FOX 9 did an entire reporter package on the “Run Obama” rally here in the Twin Cities this weekend. Clearly this was positive coverage of the groundswell of support for the Senator. I know readers will view this with skepticism, but that’s truly what happened, and again, we are sincerely apologetic.

Such skepticism may be viewed in light of last week’s presidential address: while NBC, ABC, and CBS framed the speech with the declarative caption “Presidential Address on Iraq,” Fox 9′s on-screen language read more like a White House-approved tagline: “Iraq: Moving Forward.”

Watch the clip here:

Editor’s note: Minnesota Monitor would like to thank the reader who sent in this tip.