Fox did subject, story a disservice

Fox News attempted to reinvent lynching last week, using the tools of our digital age and ignoring the ethics that once characterized broadcast journalism. Fox's goal was not to produce a killing, but to produce a character assassination.

Fox's technique was to hawk to its viewers as "news" a patchwork quilt of disparate video clips that, by design, misrepresented a civil rights hero's uplifting story of blessed racial epiphany, by suggesting that her real message was one of racial division ... or worse.

Caught in this lie, Fox and its source then sought to generate criticism of those who were snookered, and took action on the premise that the Fox story was truthful. Mature believers in the afterlife have to wonder what Ed Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Howard K. Smith, Daniel Schorr and John Chancellor had to say about all this at morning coffee last week.

Alfred Y. Kirkland Jr.

Elgin