A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, told NPR’s Terry Gross that the Fox News Channel almost sued over the cartoon’s parody of the conservative news network.
In the interest of fairness, I thought I’d offer a quick update on the story that suggests Groening may have been kidding about the potential litigation.
Just to review for a moment, The Simpsons mocked the FNC with a scene in which a fake news ticker spoofed the kind of items Fox News shares with its viewers. Among the news items shown on The Simpsons’ parody: “Study: 92 percent of Democrats are gay” … “Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple” … “JFK posthumously joins Republican Party” … “Do Democrats cause cancer? Find out at FoxNews.com.”
In a recent NPR interview, Groening said, “Fox fought against it and said that they would sue the show. And we called their bluff because we didn’t think that Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. So we got away with it.”
Fox News, however, denied Groening’s assessment and told the Washington Post last week that the network found the spoof “hysterical.”
It now appears that some corporate lawyers and public relations officials may have placed a few phone calls. On Thursday, The Simpsons issued an apology, saying that Groening was being “satirical” in his NPR comments and that “there was never any issue between the show and Fox News.”
Considering Groening’s original remarks, I’m a little skeptical about last week’s “clarification.”