Fox & Friends is apologizing after airing a graphic indicating that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away, retracting their mistake as the justice is still very much alive.
The error happened before host Ainsley Earhardt‘s interview with a college professor, with a graphic appearing on screen for a few moments before the program cut to Earhardt.
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The image in question was a photo of Bader Ginsburg that read, “Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg” along with the dates 1933-2019.
Later in the show, Earhardt and co-host Steve Doocy addressed the mistake, calling it a “technical error.”
“We need to apologize,” Doocy told the audience. “A technical error in the control room triggered a graphic of Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a date on it. We don’t want to make it seem anything other than ― that was a mistake. That was an accident. We believe she is still at home recovering from surgery. Big mistake.”
“We apologize,” Earhardt added. “Big mistake.”
“This was a technical error that emanated from the graphics team,” a Fox News spokesperson told Mediaite.
News outlets often prepare obituaries for public figures who have had health issues, as Bader Ginsburg did in December. On the 21st of the month, she had surgery to remove two cancerous growths from her left lung and is now cancer-free and recovering from the procedure.
“Post-surgery evaluation indicates no evidence of remaining disease, and no further treatment is required,” court spokeswoman Kathleen Arberg said in a statement on Jan. 11.
In early January, Bader Ginsburg missed a Supreme Court session for the first time since her appointment in 1993 when she was absent from oral arguments. While Bader Ginsburg was physically absent from the court following her surgery, she participated by reading briefs at home.
Bader Ginsburg has previously battled cancer twice, colon cancer in 1999 and pancreatic cancer in 2009. In 2012, she fell and broke two ribs, and in 2009 she was hospitalized after a negative reaction to medication, and in 2014, she underwent a procedure to have a stent implanted due to a blocked artery.
In November 2018, she suffered a fall that caused her to be hospitalized, though she was released one day later.
The justice was released from the hospital on the morning of Friday, Nov. 9, where she was admitted on Thursday, Nov. 8. Bader Ginsburg was found to have fractured three ribs on her left side during her fall. She had initially fallen at her office on that Wednesday.
Photo Credit: Getty / Michael Kovac
