Fox: We 'Screwed Up' Baltimore Shooting Story

"What happened was, we screwed up," Fox News anchor Shep Smith admitted yesterday, apologizing on behalf of the network after a false report of a police shooting in Baltimore. His colleague Mike Tobin had told host Gretchen Carlson that he had witnessed police officers shoot a fleeing man, but it later emerged that police did not fire their weapons during the incident and nobody was shot, the AP reports. Police tell the Baltimore Sun that the fleeing suspect, an unidentified black man, pulled out a revolver, which went off but didn't injure anybody. The incident brought a crowd of protesters and dozens more officers to the scene, the Sun reports.

Tobin later explained that while he hadn't really seen a shooting, he heard a gunshot and saw the suspect on the ground and "arrived at the conclusion that the individual had been shot, as you naturally would in a situation like that," the AP reports. After the incident, Baltimore City Councilman Brandon Scott complained to CNN's Jake Tapper about "irresponsible" behavior from the media in the tense city, reports Mediaite. "Media is supposed to report what they know, not what they think," Scott said, urging networks to try to cover some positive things about Baltimore. (More Fox News stories.)