December 23, 2020, 2:49 pm
Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo spent her entire morning segment interviewing an animal rights activist who was posing as the CEO of Smithfield Foods, which specialized in pork processing, before admitting her mistake. Bartiromo begins the segment by introducing her guest as Dennis Organ, but he was actually Matt Johnson of Direct Action Everywhere.
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Johnson spends much of the interview with an amused smile on his face as he stays in character. You can see Bartiromo becoming suspicious, however, as Johnson promises “transparency” from Smithfield and then accuses the entire meat industry of posing a threat to public health and being poised to start another pandemic.
“The truth is that our industry, in addition to the outbreaks that are happening at our plants, our industry poses a serious threat in effectively bringing on the next pandemic, with CDC data showing that three of four infectious diseases come from animals and the conditions inside of our of farms can sometimes be Petri dishes for new diseases,” he said.
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Watch Bartiromo’s eyes:
Bartiromo tries to direct the conversation to blaming China for issues with potentially infected meat, saying that the company was bought by a Chinese conglomerate. Johnson, however, continues to subtly trash the company he’s pretending to represent and talk about the industry’s effects on the world until she cuts him off and goes to commercial.
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When Fox returns, Bartiromo has to issue a “correction.”
“We have an important correction to make. It appears we have been punk’d,” she said. “Earlier in the program I interviewed someone claiming to be the CEO of Smithfield Foods, Dennis Organ. We’ve since learned that that was not Dennis Organ, but an imposter making false claims about the company. He is someone who has absolutely no relation to Smithfield Foods, we want to apologize to Dennis Organ, Smithfield Foods, and to our audience for making this mistake.”
The story of this severe screw-up by Fox Business soon spread to many major news outlets, and the jokes came in hotter than a river full of pigs with African swine fever.
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“This isn’t surprising. Fox spent the last four years interviewing a guy who was pretending to be President,” joked one Twitter user.
“I’ve been advocating legally compelled truth-telling as an antidote to right-wing media lies but perhaps lots more incidents like these might do wonders as well,” said Matthew Sheffield. “First Giuliani’s shirt tucking, now Maria Bartiromo revealing her extremely poor BS radar live.”
*First Published: December 23, 2020, 2:49 pm
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