Fox News actually reported on a parody news story (LOL)

[underpants]

Fox News Sinks To New Low, Repeatedly Reports Parody Story As Actual News

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/27/fox-parody/

On Tuesday, Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends” aired at least eight segments on a purported “news” story that was actually a parody article written by a publication similar to The Onion.

The backstory: Last week in the town of Lewiston, Maine, a group of Somalian Muslim middle school students were the subject of a cruel prank when their peers placed a ham steak next to them in order to personally offend the students. School officials filed a report because the students considered the act to be a hate/bias crime.

This actual story was then spoofed by a parody site called Associated Content, which made up quotes and details, such as the school’s intention to “create an anti-ham ‘response plan.’”

On Tuesday, Fox & Friends reported these parody quotes and details as actual news. Poking fun at the students, hosts asked whether ham was “a hate crime…or lunch?” and showed screen shots of ham sandwiches, starving Somalians, belching, animal noises, and mock “reenactments” of the incident. Ironically, the hosts assured viewers several times, “We’re not making this up!”

Watch a compilation:

Fox’s careless blunder made news in the town and “launched an immediate avalanche of angry phone calls and ugly e-mails to the school system.”

In the parody, the ham steak became a ham sandwich. Fake quotes were attributed to Superintendent Leon Levesque, Stephen Wessler of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, and one of the Somali students targeted in the incident. <…>

Following the Fox broadcast, Levesque’s office received dozens of angry phone calls and profanity-laced e-mails, made and sent by people all over the country, who charge the school district overreacted to what they believed from news reports to be a ham sandwich tossed at a Somali student. <…>

“Fox has figured out, from the calls we’ve gotten, that they’ve made a big mistake,” Wessler said.

“This is a wake-up call that the level of hate and anger, among a small population, is vibrant,” he added.

Levesque said he was bothered not only that the parody took aim at a sensitive issue in Lewiston, but also that Fox and others reported the information as fact without checking. The national media, Levesque said, sees information posted online and “uses it as gospel.”

We’ve long known Fox News’ reporting was parody, but reporting parody news is a new low.

[MidwestTransplant]

1. I thought Faux was a new parody network?

[ShortnFiery]

2. Hilarious!

Dumb-ass FOX news fiends and friends. :rofl:

[BadAssTeddyBear]

3. Idiots

I've always known they were idiots over at Fox news, but come on........

Not double checking the story just proves they aren't journalist either.

[renate]

4. seriously, do you think they've used Associated Content as a source before

A little digging might turn up some fairly hilarious results.

[Fresh_Start]

5. pity we didn't get to hear Limbaugh and O'Reilly expound

before the parody was revealed

[BlooInBloo]

6. So did Lou Dobbs,

[Javaman]

7. The knee jerk reaction network...

way to check the sources faux.

Fucking tools.

[treestar]

8. Didn't a newspaper in China do this once?

At least they had language barriers as an excuse.

:rofl:

[Kolesar]

11. The US Congress demanded a "retractable dome" on the Capitol or they would leave the city

was the story relayed from The Onion to a Chinese newspaper.

[johnnie]

9. Maybe fox can use this link

www.snopes.com


:rofl:

[youthere]

10. BaconGate.

[kiteinthewind]

12. OMG, that is hilarious.

Yeah, they are 'real' journalists, and all! :sarcasm:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[YOY]

13. Waitaminute Waitaminute Waitaminute Waitaminute Waitaminute

FOX has FRIENDS???

Yes, I know it's the show's (very stupid name) before someone gives me a 'captain obvious comment'.

[zbdent]

14. and yet they would lynch Dan Rather and still claim that they

are bastions of factual, well-researched and honest news stories ...

:puke:

[Rosemary2205]

15. I do not think this is funny at all.

I do not believe for one second Fox made a mistake. I think it was deliberate and was designed to hatemonger. They know damn well half their viewers are psychos who will dutifully spend the next few months stalking and scaring the hell out of those students and school officials.

Already thanks in part to the dickheads of Fox there are way too many places in America that muslim women still cannot go safely if they wear the headscarf (hajib?).

This crap should be criminal.

[progressoid]

16. And did they issue a correction?

It won't be long before my RW relatives will be emialing me this as fact. Christ. :eyes:

[K8-EEE]

17. Hilarious Freeper Thread: THEIR OUTRAGED IM SERIES!!!!!!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1823856/posts

:rofl:

[K8-EEE]

18. LOL!

"If the Islamite terrorist students had sawed of the head of a Chistian student with a dull rusty knife in study hall, the incident would have been ignored by the Study hall monitor, the school principle, the superintendent of schools, the local police department, the town mayor, state representative, the governor, the US rep for the district,the local news media, the MSM,and the ACLU.

It would have been called anything but a hate crime and would have been described, if described at all as a muslim student giving a Christian student a free haircut that went bad."

omg!

[warren pease]

19. Just connecting with their viewers

If the audience is dumb as dirt, so too should be the news readers. Builds a kind of solidarity of the dull-normal, an alliance of violent, impotent imbeciles, a coalition of Neanderthals whose members are too dysfunctional to handle anything more complicated than ordering a pizza, slamming down a 12 pack of Bud Lite and spending another solo night in the Lazy Boy congratulating himself for being white and hating those filthy, disgusting towelheads -- while loudly burping and farting, getting up to pee and missing the bowl, acidic sweat oozing from every pore, farting some more, picking a zit, and finally passing out to Fux's sweet sounds of aryan solidarity and the dumb shit news reader who's JUST LIKE HIM... only with better hair and teeth.


Sounds about right.


wp

[peaches2003]

20. Fox and Friends

All of FoxNews is mostly 'faux', but Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy on Fox and Friends are dumb as dirt.

[badgerpup]

21. Fact-checking? FAUX News? Ha! It is to laugh!

or cry...
Remember when that reporter blithely showed a house where terrorists lived...
three years ago...but neglected to add that one leetle tiny detail?
The one about how they DIDN'T live there anymore?
:banghead:
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/silence/archives/2005/08/talking_head_gi.shtml

The people living there at the time of the broadcast were terrorized, alright...:grr:

[lies and propaganda]

22. This is beyond great!

so so so awesome!