“It looks like we were punished,” said Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business presenter, after the last air crash that hit the conservative network.
In a segment broadcast on Wednesday night, Bartiromo seemed to believe he was interviewing Dennis Organ, president and chief executive of giant pig producer Smithfield Foods. In fact, she was interviewing Matt Johnson of the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere.
The six-minute interview began with Bartiromo asking about a Covid-19 outbreak at a Smithfield plant in South Dakota and the company’s plans for vaccine distribution. Johnson responded by discussing a “dedicated and resilient” team and a company’s commitment to providing “comprehensive personal protective equipment” to employees.
But soon the content of the meeting changed, as Johnson “personally promised[d] that we will do better, and the first change under my leadership is transparency and, at times, brutal honesty ”.
With that, he started to diatribe about the food industry and how it could contribute to another pandemic. The farms were “petri dishes” for infectious diseases, he said, turning into malicious smiles and pauses before Bartiromo hung up on the interview.
Responding to a request for comment, a Fox News spokeswoman pointed to Bartiromo’s correction in the air.
“We want to apologize to Dennis Organ, Smithfield Foods and our audience for making this mistake,” said Bartiromo. “We will certainly be more vigilant.”
Smithfield managing director Keira Lombardo said in a statement: “A simple Google search for a photo of our CEO would have prevented this from happening. This allowed false information to run, and Fox apologized for this complete lapse. “
Johnson told Wrap that he was “not very aware” of the feat, which he said was partly inspired by a recent online fact check on fraud allegations in the vote and involved “fake email addresses and phone numbers. false and lots of pitches ”.
Critics of Fox News and Fox Business have pointed out that this is hardly Bartiromo’s first encounter with false information, referring to more than just fact-checking allegations about Smartmatic, a company that makes voting machines.
Bartiromo got an interview in November with Donald Trump, the first after his defeat in the elections for Joe Biden. At that meeting, the host referred to Trump’s baseless allegations “many times that this election was rigged, that there was a lot of fraud and the facts are on his side,” and then supported the president.
“So they made dumps,” she said, referring to claims that Democrats flooded states with fraudulent votes, “massive massive dumps in Michigan, Pennsylvania and everywhere else. This is disgusting and we cannot allow America’s election to be corrupted. “
The host later said that an unidentified “source of intelligence” was “telling me that President Trump did indeed win the election”. In fact, his own network, like others, called for the election of Biden and election officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security said there was no fraud.
Bartiromo “used to be Larry King in the business world,” Joe Lockhart, former White House press secretary, told the Washington Post. “But I think she saw the rankings of names like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and even Lou Dobbs, and she saw that the way to survive on Fox is to go all-in for Donald Trump.”
Bartiromo maintained access to the president, interviewing him while other reporters were excluded. She told the Post: “Since I started covering President Trump and covering the coup and the effort to overthrow him, I have become the enemy of the media, activists and mobs. I have an advantage. I mean, I keep my weapons and I’m not easily fooled. “
In a previous role as a CNBC reporter during the dot-com boom, Bartiromo attracted a cult following and came to be known, by some, as “Money Honey” or even “Sophia Loren of financial journalism”. Among her admirers was Joey Ramone, lead singer of the Ramones, who started contacting her for stock tips.
Speaking to the Guardian in 2006, Bartiromo said: “I started getting emails from him and he said, ‘Maria, what do you think about Intel or AOL?’ and I thought, ‘Who is this person who is emailing me? It’s crazy, he calls himself Joey Ramone.
“It was certainly him and we developed this friendship. And he was attuned to the markets. He really understood his own investment portfolio. Joey Ramone was a fantastic investor. “
The singer, who died in 2001, later contacted Bartiromo to say that he had written a song about her and invited her to CBGB to listen to her. Bartiromo did not show up – she had to wake up at 6 am – but sent a film crew.
“For sure, the cameraman came back with the tape and there he was and his band with this song Maria Bartiromo and I just love it. It is a tremendous tribute. I just love it. It’s great, great. “
The song appeared on Ramone’s last album.