It's safe to say that this hasn't been the greatest week for Maria Bartiromo.
After this segment ran this morning on Fox Business News, Bartiromo came back from commercial to apologize that they had been duped at the animal rights activist. Bartiromo seemed oblivious to the fact, as the activist did the segment mostly in character, Bartiromo rolled her eyes a couple of times, probably thinking that the Smithfield Foods CEO was the not the best spokesman ever for industry PR.
Two nearly identical stories out today, by the Washington Post "What Happened to Maria Bartiromo?" and the LA Times "What happened to Maria Bartiromo? The Trump election fraud story has the TV news biz asking" detail her fall from grace as a once-respected business journalist to her present-day role as Trump stooge.
Source: Mediaite
Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo interviewed an animal rights activist posing as the CEO of food processing company Smithfield for an entire segment on Wednesday morning.
At the end of her daily show Mornings With Maria, the anchor issued a correction to the interview, noting: “We have been punk’d.”
The segment was presented as an interview with Dennis Organ, the CEO of Smithfield Foods Inc., on providing vaccines for food workers amid an outbreak of coronavirus cases at one the company’s plants. Bartiromo was actually speaking to Matt Johnson of Direct Action Everywhere, a grassroots animal rights group.
The activist posing as the CEO carried out the interview in character, while making some notable statements. At one point, he claimed that as CEO, “the first change under my leadership is transparency and at times brutal honesty.”
“The truth is that our industry, in addition to the outbreaks that are happening at our plants, our industry poses a serious threat in effectively bringing on the next pandemic, with CDC data showing that three of four infectious diseases come from animals and the conditions inside of our of farms can sometimes be Petri dishes for new diseases,” he said.
Maria Bartiromo has changed.
The great @SteveBattaglio explains why her colleagues say she's losing her reputation as a respected business journalist https://t.co/dCxD5EJg3f— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 23, 2020
Maria Bartiromo's journey from an icon of financial journalism at CNBC to a Trumpworld go-to. My latesthttps://t.co/HoMlJgAUO3
— Sarah Ellison (@sarahellison) December 23, 2020
