Broadcast Blunder of the Year

by Intern Christina

Today is a historic date. June 28th, 2012, will go down not as the day that Obamacare was bolstered by the Supreme Court’s supportive 5-4 vote, but as the day CNN and Fox reported that it wasn’t.

At around 7 AM, both networks reported and discussed the court’s decision to shoot down Obama’s healthcare plan, one of the most, if not the most, crucial pieces of legislation to come out of his presidency. It goes without saying that most Americans and all of the major news networks were on the edge of their seat about this.

For anyone following the Supreme Court of the United States blog, the decision was announced correctly. The court decided, in a very close vote, to support the constitutionality of every facet of the plan.

For anyone with a TV tuned in to Fox or CNN, it was not. Hilariously enough, they got it wrong, somehow jumping the gun and releasing the above erroneous headlines.

CNN later issued this statement:

“In his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts initially said that the individual mandate was not a valid exercise of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause. CNN reported that fact, but then wrongly reported that therefore the court struck down the mandate as unconstitutional. However, that was not the whole of the Court’s ruling. CNN regrets that it didn’t wait to report out the full and complete opinion regarding the mandate. We made a correction within a few minutes and apologize for the error.”

Sure, blame the Supreme Court. All jokes aside, CNN and Fox are guilty of some shoddy communication.

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