Obama fishing ban story spread by Glenn Beck, ESPN needs to fire Robert Montgomery
Jeffrey Weeks - Charlotte Fishing Examiner
Amazingly enough, although I took to the internet immediately to correct this terribly irresponsible story by ESPN writer Robert Montgomery, I seem to be among a few scattered voices of sanity in a bewildering mass hysteria that is now fueling news reports and right-wing outrage.
At this point even though ESPN has acknowledged their mistake and the White House has officially dismissed this growing urban myth, it continues to be make waves among anglers as first Rush Limbaugh and now Glenn Beck have cited the absurd story as fact and repeated this false rumor on air.
“I told you a year ago this would happen,” said Glenn Beck on his broadcast yesterday. “No more fishing. Really? Yeah, apparently some environmentalists want to save the fish. Forget about the frickin' fish. People are losing their rights. Who's more important: the fish or you?”
At this point ESPN needs to immediately and loudly apologize to the American fishing community for publishing this harmful and damaging story and Robert Montgomery should be fired from ESPN.
Let me give you the background on how this urban myth was given life by ESPN and then spread across the nation by right-wing hysteria.
Two days ago Robert Montgomery published a story reporting that the Obama Administration had ended it’s public comment period on a task force that will eventually give some recommendations on saltwater fishing.
That’s it, at least for the truth part. Anyone who has followed this story knows that what this task force will ultimately recommend will likely involve some broad suggestions for ways to manage offshore ocean saltwater fishing stocks, if it goes that far.
Robert Montgomery, however, insinuated in his ESPN article that President Obama was about to ban recreational fishing.
Here is what I wrote, the same day, almost immediately after this incredible story hit the internet on ESPN’s official website:
“In what may be the worst example of outdoor sports reporting in the history of America, ESPN has claimed that President Barack Obama is on the verge of banning recreational fishing.”
I then went on to carefully debunk this false report.
Incredibly, Robert Montgomery himself attacked me for the story in the comments section of my article before he strangely disappeared from public site, apparently to collect his paycheck for telling the biggest “fish story” I’ve ever seen.
ESPN let the article stand on it’s own for an entire day before making some small changes like inserting the word “possibly” (the original story has been deleted but exist throughout the nation on blogs and emails) and admitting in a broad statement they had made a huge error.
Here is the ESPN statement:
“ESPNOutdoors.com inadvertently contributed to a flare-up Tuesday when we posted the latest piece in a series of stories on President Barack Obama's newly created Ocean Policy Task Force, a column written by Robert Montgomery, a conservation writer for BASS since 1985.
Regrettably, we made several errors in the editing and presentation of this installment. Though our series has included numerous news stories on the topic, this was not one of those -- it was an opinion piece, and should clearly have been labeled as commentary.
And while our series overall has examined several sides of the topic, this particular column was not properly balanced and failed to represent contrary points of view. We have reached out to people on every side of the issue and reported their points of view -- if they chose to respond -- throughout the series, but failed to do so in this specific column.”
The most amazing part of this weak denial of responsibility is the word “inadvertently”.
As I stated at the time, no one in the fishing community could mistake this as an inadvertent spin on the innocuous task force decision to simply end public comment, as all task forces must eventually do if they are ever going to issue a report of any kind.
No, I believe Robert Montgomery knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote this column. It clearly was an attempt to ignite anger and fear in fishermen across the nation, which it has been spectacularly successful at doing despite my best efforts to stop this from happening.
All I can say is that I tried, folks. But I do not have a public platform like ESPN and the story spun out of control fulfilling my dark expectations, as rush Limbaugh repeated it on the radio and then Glenn Beck put it on national television.
The amazing part of all this is that the true victims here are turning out to be honest and decent conservative fishermen who happen to be right-wingers, which is no problem for me at all. A large part of the angling community is very conservative and has every right to be. These folks are my friends and entirely entitled to dislike President Obama all they want.
Montgomery’s deception, however, has turned them into liars, as they are now out among the fishing community spreading this myth as fact and arguing throughout tackle shops and internet sites across the nation that Obama is getting ready to ban recreational fishing.
The White House has now officially denied this story as best they can, but frankly in our current political environment conservative anglers across the country simply won’t believe the truth. It’s hard to blame them with folks like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck repeating it on the air as fact.
The best thing that can happen now is for ESPN to man up and apologize to the American people for they have done and to publicly fire Robert Montgomery for what I believe with ever fiber of my body was an intentional attempt to use ESPN to manipulate public opinion disguised as a news story.
Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck then need to take to the airwaves (please!) and tell the right wing community and a nation of worried fishermen that this story is untrue.
Short of that I don’t see this stopping anytime soon. The Obama fishing ban is the now one of the biggest fishing lies of all time, and Robert Montgomery and ESPN should be embarrassed and ashamed to have started it.
March 11, 2010