You gotta love it. CBS affiliate WCCO-TV finally breaks the silence on that idiotic news story they ran about a Chinatown meat market selling dog meat. Turns out, it was just a tiny misunderstanding with interviewee's accent: "duck" meat.
Over three weeks after the initial story -- which was subsequently hidden then removed from the station's website -- WCCO has quietly posted an Editor's Note finally stating that it did indeed run a story on dog breeder. And that's it. It neither apologizes nor even acknowledges that the station did anything wrong:
Dog Breeder Story [Editor's Note]Wait, did someone forget to post a couple of paragraphs of the statement? Or is that seriously it? Because it really appears as though they've gone out of their way to say absolutely nothing. Amazing.
On Oct. 31, WCCO aired a story during our 10 p.m. news about a dog breeder who was found to have sold nearly 1,400 dogs after her USDA license to sell was terminated in August 2010.
While investigating where those dogs ended up, we discovered an address where, on 12 separate occasions over a period of approximately a year, a total of 168 dogs were shipped. At that address in New York, we found two business establishments including a market. During our visit we found no evidence of the dogs.
When we called the market, the person we spoke to said he didn’t speak English but then gave an interview in English. We asked him if the market sold dogs, and we believed he answered in the affirmative. We now believe he said duck.
"We now believe he said duck." No shit. Nearly a month goes by, and that's the brilliant conclusion WCCO editors have come up with? If only reporter James Schugel had put this much thought into his original investigation.
