Seattle Station Catches Heat for Spicer/Hitler Story

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When the news came down on Friday that Sean Spicer was getting the hell out of the Trump administration, stations were all over the story.

KCPQ in Seattle did the story and along with showing Spicer, they as showed a picture of Hitler. It was file video from back in April, when Spicer made some comments about Hitler. The video was in context then, but certainly was not while talking about his resignation. 

It wasn't long after the story hit the air, that the phone lines and social media started lighting up at KCPQ.

In fact it got bad enough, that News Director Erica Hill had to send a memo to the staff about how to handle the viewers.

Of course, FTVLive has a copy of the memo:

Here is our response plan to the Sean Spicer video incident this morning.

Please read this carefully.

We are only responding directly to people on social vs posting a “statement” on our website. I am working with the corporate communications and digital team to track this.

Digital team: Please use the response below to respond to direct messages and keep me in the loop on the volume.

Talent and Digital team: Please use the statements below as a response directly to anyone who has reached out to you (important that we respond directly).

Desk: please do your best to respond with the information below if you get a call – you can always forward the calls to me or Matt

STATEMENT

Facebook:

Hi (John) Thank you for your message – here’s a statement from our News Director about what happened:

This was a regretful, unfortunate error and should have never happened.

This morning during the breaking news coverage of Sean Spicer’s resignation, we aired file video that was pulled from a story that aired in April of this year where Sean Spicer had compared Syrian leader Assad to Adolf Hitler.

That old video clip contained file footage of Hitler and in the context of today’s resignation, it was out of place. This was an error made during the editing process and should have never happened.

Erica Hill, Q13 News Director. 

For twitter: We regret this mistake. It happened in editing (we pulled footage from a story that aired in April where Spicer compared Assad to Hitler.)

Erica Hill | NEWS DIRECTOR, Q13FOX · JOETV · Portland’s CW
TRIBUNE MEDIA SEATTLE & PORTLAND

Of course since this station will soon be owned by Trump's BFF's Sinclair, you can see why the station is scrambling as they try and get the toothpaste back in the tube.