After Fox seemed to Do the Right Thing and broadcast a longer and more specific apology for showing the Conyers clip instead of Jefferson, they are back to being idiots with an explanation of what happened:

Fox pinned the error on a young staff member in an Associated Press report Tuesday night.

“Fox blamed the mistake on a 22-year-old production assistant hurriedly grabbing a wrong videotape. Fox’s Washington bureau chief, Brian Wilson, said he was mortified by the error,” the news service reported.

Okay, let’s work this one out. The error was made by a “22-year-old production assistant” who “hurriedly grabb[ed] a wrong videotape.” First of all, stating the age of the person raises a tiny red flag–it’s as if they’re using that to explain the error by implying it was some inexperienced newbie, as if they are trying a wee bit too hard to place blame. But the real flags go up when you think about how this could have played out.

The production assistant hurriedly grabs the wrong videotape. Think about it: someone tells the assistant to get a tape showing Jefferson. The assistant runs to the archive and somehow grabs the wrong tape. But how does he make such an error? Are the archive tapes of black Democratic representatives in the House all bunched together or something? Clearly, the “hurriedly” part makes it clear that the assistant did not sit and view tapes, so that he himself made the error in identifying the person on the tape. So how did the assistant make the error?

This is clarified, sort of, by the on-air explanation as reported by the AP:

On Wednesday, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum explained to viewers that a production assistant picked up a tape that had been identified as a meeting about Jefferson. The picture showed Conyers.

OK. So now we are supposed to believe that the assistant took the wrong videotape because it was identified wrongly (identified how–by a label or by someone telling the assistant?). So, how does that make this the fault of a “22-year-old production assistant”? Even if it was the assistant’s job to review the tape, the person who initially misidentified the tape should be the one to blame.

All of this only removes the explanation one iteration and does not explain how the original mixup was made. The tape was not only obviously of Conyers, but the fact that Gonzales was there should have tipped off even the most inexperienced of interns.

So we are back to the original question: how did Fox News mix up one black representative with another? That’s the question Fox is trying not to answer, and likely for good reason.