During special live coverage Friday afternoon of the hostage standoff situation in Paris related to the deadly January 7 terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices, Fox News anchor Shep Smith took New York Times London bureau chief Steve Erlanger to task for cavalierly suggesting that Fox News was not being "careful" in its reporting on the matter.
When Smith pressed Erlanger, who appeared on air to detail exactly how Fox News had not been careful in its reporting, Erlanger confessed that he had not been watching the network's coverage before joining in via telephone.
Suffice it to say, Smith was understandably peeved with such condescension (watch the video below; emphasis mine):
SHEPARD SMITH: Joining us now from Paris is Steve Erlanger, he's the London bureau chief for the New York Times. Steve, what can you tell us about this warning from the authorities there of a possible second Western attack to come?
STEVE ERLANGER: Well, we need to be careful in the moments after such a thing--
SMITH: You don't have to tell me that.
ERLANGER: Well, that's, that's -- I hope -- true. And there are warnings, even MI5, the head of MI5 which is like the British FBI, gave a speech yesterday in which he warned that al-Qaeda in the middle east was planning larger attacks including against London.
It's very hard, it's very easy to draw lines through all these things and to make them one, but there's no question that this attack and this sense of a cell in France, that it wasn't just two brothers, that they had friends and accomplices,has shaken people very, very badly. And there'll be lots of questions about why intel didn't know what was going on, did they take these brothers seriously enough, could this have been prevented? The magazine, Charlie Hebdo, had been a major --
[...]
SMITH: I'm very curious about, you said we need to be careful. On what matter did you think we were not careful, based on what you just said and what we reported, Mr. Erlanger?
ERLANGER: I mean, frankly, I have not been listening very, very carefully to you --
SMITH: Uh huh. So you just said that because why?
ERLANGER: No, no, no. I'm not getting in a fight with you.
SMITH: That's good.
ERLANGER: I'm simply saying that -- Look, you asked me to come and talk to you. I'm telling you what I think I know.
SMITH: Well, you told me that you thought we need to be careful and what I can report to you, sir, is we're being very careful.
ERLANGER: I'm sorry, sir, either you're going to let me talk or you're not. I guess you're not.
SMITH: Steve Erlanger, from the New York Times. It's nice to speak with you, thanks very much.
