Speaking of not going back and apologizing, Fox News gets away with another one

In a "highly unusual" move," BI's Natasha Bertrand reports, the DOJ "secretly invited reporters to view texts sent by ousted FBI agents." In Fox shorthand, these are the "anti-Trump texts" that have been a source of intrigue and outrage for over a week. Robert Mueller removed Peter Strzok from his team after the texts were uncovered over the summer. Fox and other conservative outlets have been saying for a week that Strzok and Lisa Page exchanged "over 10,000 texts."

On Tuesday evening, roughly 375 of the texts were released to Congress and shared with news organizations, ahead of Rod Rosenstein's testimony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Fox News repeatedly inflated the # and misreported the story, and I haven't seen any correction yet. On Tuesday night, the 11pm news anchor Shannon Bream said Fox had scored all 10,000 texts. The on-screen banner read "FOX NEWS HAS OBTAINED 10,000 TEXTS." Correspondent Kristin Fisher said the same thing: "Shannon, Fox News has JUST obtained those 10,000 text messages... These are the anti-Trump text messages... 10,000 is a big number. We're still going through them."

Bream wrapped the segment this way: "It's a very big story... We are going to continue to pour through these." Fisher agreed: "They're still coming in." Bream: "There is a lot. When you have 10,000 to read, it takes a little time." Fox re-aired this segment four times overnight.

But this mistake was repeated again on "Fox & Friends First" at 5am. At 7am, there was another mistake: Steve Doocy said the pair "sent 10,000 anti-Trump emails, text messages, back and forth." The implication was that Strzok and Page hated Trump so much, they talked about all day everyday, 10,000 times! But no, they apparently sent 10,000 messages total, mostly nonpolitical. But Doocy did get this part right: "Fox News yesterday obtained 375 of them." That's the closest Fox came to a correction. Later in the day, Bream tweeted a "clarification."

Fox's repeated errors led to an awkward exchange between Rosenstein and Hakeem Jeffries. "How is it possible that Fox News apparently has 10,000 text messages?" he asked. Rosenstein said, "I wouldn't assume that's true just because it was in the news, Congressman. I'm not aware of that."