Sago Mine Disaster : “We Were Beat By Everybody,” FNC Bureau Chief Says

In her monthly staff meeting this morning, a stern-faced Fox News Washington bureau chief Kim Hume excoriated her employees for a “significant failure” during coverage of the Sago mine disaster, according to an anonymous tipster. Hume pointed out some things the bureau had done well (like a recent Bush interview and the Alito hearings) but focused on the mine story. FNC was behind CNN in its reporting from WV, especially from 11pm to 5am as the miners were pronounced alive, then dead.) She “says ‘we were beat by everybody,’ adding we have to turn ourselves into a news organization, not a bunch of bureaucrats,” the tipster said…

> Update: 3:54pm: A tipster clarifies: “When Kim Hume said in the meeting this morning that we got beat by everyone, she meant physically getting to WVA after everyone, we were the last network to have DC based reporters (Mike Emanuel) arrive in WVA. And when she said to stop acting like bureaucrats, that’s out of context, she said that we’re not the government and we don’t get holidays off, that everyone should not plan to have holidays off and should plan to visit their families in October becase we will be staffed on holidays they way we are on non-holiday days. Then she said if you want to be a bureaucrat, go work for the federal government, because we’re not a bunch of bureaucrats. She was really mean about holidays, and told everyone to expect to NOT get holidays off and to leave if you do.”