Topic: WorldNetDaily
As WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein sides with a dictator, that dictator's supporters are beating up and detaining journalists. And it turns out one of those attacked journalists has a previous connection to Klein.
Olaf Wiig is a freelance cameraman who regularly works with Fox News, and he and Fox correspondent Greg Palkot were severely beaten by pro-Mubarak supporters. In 2006, Wiig and another Fox News reporter, Steve Centanni, were kidnapped in Gaza and held for two weeks before being released.
As we detailed at the tine, when Klein reported on the story for WND, he claimed that a $2 million ransom had been paid for the reporters' release, and he suggested that Fox News had paid it. Fox News was quick to shoot down that claim, which led to much huffiness on the part of WND editor Joseph Farah insisting that Klein had never made such a claim. That's only technically true; while Klein did not assert that Fox News had paid a ransom, nowhere did he state that it didn't.
Klein, meanwhile, followed up with a column that was part defense ("No source stated or implied the money came from Fox News") and part suck-up ("I cannot stand idly by while others misrepresent and falsify my words to wrongly smear America's best cable news network").
The suck-up worked -- Klein has regularly appeared on Fox News and its Fox Business sister network since that time, most recently on Jan. 31 pontificating about Egypt.
It's incredibly ironic that a news cameraman whose kidnapping Klein misreported on has been attacked by a dictatorial regime Klein is helping to cling to power.
