Intellectual Property Law

Fox News Channel anchor E.D. Hill apologized to viewers Tuesday for characterizing a set of Barack and Michelle Obama's gestures as "terrorist fist jabs." The Emmy-award-winning journalist offered the mia culpa after the liberal media-watchdog group Media Matters launched an internet petition Tuesday morning urging viewers to let Fox know that the comment was beyond the pale.

Hill's is just the latest of a string of apologies that have come from high-profile television news personalities in this super-heated, and super-long, presidential election. The candidates, by virtue of being who they are, place the sensitive subjects of gender and race on the front-burner, and Media Matters has caught many controversial comments along the way, as well as the subsequent apologies.

For example, NBC anchor Andrea Mitchell apologized on Monday on MSNBC Live for describing  Bristol, Virginia -- a place where Obama was campaigning -- as "real redneck, sort of, bordering on Appalachia country." In late May, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta apologized for joking that Obama should be assassinated, along with Osama Bin Laden. In February, conservative Fox talk show host Bill O'Reilly apologized for saying that he "didn't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's hard evidence, hard facts that say this is how the woman really feels." And in January, MSNBC political pundit Chris Matthews apologized for charging that Hillary Clinton only managed to win office of any kind because she played the sympathy card as a victim of her husband's infidelities. 

"The internet has leveled the playing field, and what used to escape into the ether  is now recorded in real-time so that people can hold the media accountable -- it's media accountability 101," said Karl Frisch, a Media Matters spokesman. "These comments, once recorded and transcribed on the internet, cannot be ignored."

Hill's show "America's Pulse" was also canceled, according to MediaBistro's TV Newser, although it's not clear whether that development is related to this incident.