Who is Nils Bildt? Could Fox News be *that* irresponsible?

[collinsmark]

Who is Nils Bildt? Could Fox News be that irresponsible?

Does an "independent analyst" -- a title anybody could claim -- really qualify him as ”Swedish defense and national security advisor”?

Fox News continues to focus on the debate about how immigration is breaking Sweden. One guest last night, described as a ”Swedish defense and national security advisor”, spoke about the problems caused by criminality in Swedish cities and suburbs. But neither the Swedish Defense Ministry nor Foreign Office have heard of the expert. Nils Bildt, who called for an “open and honest” debate on crime, has previously been convicted of a violent offence in the United States.

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/fa...ions-in-us-no-connection-to-swedish-security/

And some additional commentary from the Washington Post:

Fox News's coverage of Sweden has become a subject of debate over the past week, after President Trump referred to “what’s happening” in the country during a rally in Florida last weekend. Swedish experts were confused by the comments, but Trump later clarified he had been referring to a segment with filmmaker Ami Horowitz that had aired on Fox News Channel's “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

Horowitz's film had suggested a link between refugees and increased crime rates in Sweden, but Swedish experts say he oversimplified the problem, and two policemen interviewed by the filmmaker said they had been misrepresented by him.

Speaking to Dagens Nyheter, security expert Wiktorin had suggested Bildt's interview was a “disturbing trend” in U.S. media where Sweden is presented as a “problem country.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-1033am:homepage/story&utm_term=.35a601d02ce1

 

[phinds]

Could Fox News be that irresponsible?

Yes. This is hardly the first time that they have just flat out lied in a way that in a more responsible organization would be called staggeringly incompetent fact checking. Although I'm confident that there are a plethora of examples, the only one that I can think of specifically off the top of my head is when Hannity had 3 people on to say how terribly they had suffered under ObamaCare and it turned out that one of them had never applied for ObamaCare, and one of them actually would have gotten better coverage for less cost under it than his current plan. They all just hated Obama and Hannity was happy to indulge them.

 

[StatGuy2000]

Yes. This is hardly the first time that they have just flat out lied in a way that in a more responsible organization would be called staggeringly incompetent fact checking. Although I'm confident that there are a plethora of examples, the only one that I can think of specifically off the top of my head is when Hannity had 3 people on to say how terribly they had suffered under ObamaCare and it turned out that one of them had never applied for ObamaCare, and one of them actually would have gotten better coverage for less cost under it than his current plan. They all just hated Obama and Hannity was happy to indulge them.

The other great example about the irresponsibility of Fox News was the so-called "terror expert" on Fox News, Steven Emerson, on how Birmingham, UK is a "totally Muslim city" where non-Muslims "simply don't go", and about no-go zones in London, Paris, and elsewhere several years ago.

https://news.vice.com/article/terro...rmingham-is-a-totally-muslim-city-on-fox-news

The response to this so-called expert was so scathing that even British PM (at the time) David Cameron said the following: "When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April fool's day. This guy's clearly a complete idiot."

So I'm not at all surprised that Fox News would resort to the same tricks again, now with Sweden.

 

[DennisN]

Who is Nils Bildt?

I am Swedish and I have never heard of him (which of course does not say very much). I'm going to check Swedish media for the name, I'll be back...

 

[DennisN]

Ok, I have just heard a Swedish interview with this Nils Bildt where he says that the subtitle Fox used was misleading. Nils Bildt is independent, and he also says he has not been working for the Swedish government in any way.

News source (in Swedish from Sveriges Radio, Sweden's national broadcaster): "Nils Bildt skyller misstag på Fox"
and Google translate actually did a pretty good job translating the page to English: "Nils Bildt blames mistakes on Fox".