{"id":10639,"date":"2007-04-27T14:06:54","date_gmt":"2007-04-27T18:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10639.html"},"modified":"2007-04-27T14:06:54","modified_gmt":"2007-04-27T18:06:54","slug":"fox-news-literally-slips-into-parody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/fox-news-literally-slips-into-parody\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox News (literally) slips into parody"},"content":{"rendered":"

For all the times I’ve accused Fox News of being a parody of real journalism, I never actually expected the network to make the charge literally true<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last week in the town of Lewiston, Maine, a group of Somalian Muslim middle school students were the subject of a cruel prank<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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

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\u2026or 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!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, no, Fox & Friends wasn’t making it up, someone else was making it up. FNC was just passing it along as real news.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, this wasn’t just an example of shoddy professionalism from an outlet that has no standards. Apparently, Fox News viewers, knowledgeable bunch<\/a> that they are, responded to the “news story” by going after the school system<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

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. [\u2026]<\/p>\n

“Fox has figured out, from the calls we’ve gotten, that they’ve made a big mistake,” Wessler said.<\/p>\n

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

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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When bad things happen to bad journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For all the times I’ve accused Fox News of being a parody of real journalism, I never actually expected the network to make the charge literally true. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}