Baltimore State's Attorney files complaint against Fox station for reporting about her

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

As we’ve discovered over the past six months or more, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has been making plenty of headlines, none of them very flattering. With the various “irregularities” showing up in her records, there is currently a grand jury investigation into the conduct of her office underway, along with an IRS audit of her and her husband’s tax records. Well, Ms. Mosby has had enough of these meddling reporters and their insinuations. She’s filed a complaint with the FCC over the Baltimore Fox News affiliate, accusing them of… well, I’m honestly not sure what she’s accusing them of. But it involves bias and persecution and, of course, racism. (Yahoo News)

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The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission about the local Fox News affiliate television station, WBFF Fox 45. The complaint claims the station’s coverage of the office — and State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby in particular — is “slanted,” “misleading,” “racist” and “extremely dangerous.”

The complaint, filed by Baltimore City SAO Communications Director Zy Richardson, cites FCC guidelines stating that “rigging or slanting the news is [deemed] a most heinous act against the public interest.”

Richardson also asserts “the news coverage of the WBFF persistently follows a disconcerting and dangerous pattern: beginning with a slanted, rigged, misleading or inflammatory headline; followed by a conspiracy theory; and supported with guest commentary from disgruntled ex-employees or political opponents that lend false credibility to their biased coverage or omission of facts.”

What Mosby is accusing WBFF Fox 45 of is actually, you know… doing their jobs. Mosby is an elected official who has been placed in charge of an office with significant powers over the well-being of the residents of Baltimore and a sizable budget. Anything she does in her official capacity is the public’s business. And if she is engaged in any illegal or inappropriate activities, that is also of interest to the voters.

Both Mosby and her husband, City Council President Nick Mosby (also an elected official subject to scrutiny by the press), have given WBFF plenty to report on. In March, a federal probe was launched into Mosby’s extravagant spending on what she claimed was business travel and various expenses associated with it. Mosby has also come under scrutiny for permanently halting all prosecutions for a number of non-violent crimes in Charm City. These are both clearly matters of public interest.

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In addition to that, at least according to the IRS, Mosby and her husband have somehow repeatedly forgotten to pay their taxes, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in IRS liens against their property. And yet, for people who are so short of funds, the Mosby’s managed to purchase two vacation homes in Florida worth more than a million dollars over the winter.

And let’s not forget that while she was working as the city’s State’s Attorney, she set up three rather dodgy-looking travel businesses on the side. She claims that the entities only exists on paper, but leaked emails showed that she was conducting business on behalf of those agencies using her city work computer and email account. When the press filed FOIA requests to obtain those emails, she told them to go pound sand and refused to comply.

And yes, WBFF has been reporting on all of those stories, along with the Baltimore Sun and most other press outlets. Don’t you suppose that they should be doing that? It’s sort of their job, after all.

Mosby does make one possibly valid point in her complaint. It seems that on at least one occasion, WBFF revealed her home address during their reporting. Mosby claimed that this put her and her family in danger from rioters and protesters. That might be something worthy of an apology if it was simply sloppy reporting, but it still doesn’t sound like any sort of intentional bias or rigged, inflammatory reporting. We’ll have to wait and see if the FCC finds any merit to these claims or not.

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