Fox News Considered Suing Fox's "The Simpsons"

ZeDanimal writes "The Simpsons' pooh-bah Matt Groening said in an NPR interview this week that the Fox News Channel considered legal action against the show for its parody of the station's news ticker. Broadcast, of course, by Fox Entertainment, the episode that raised the ire of the "Fair and Balanced" Fox News crew was Krusty For Congress, which mocked the perceived rightward-leanings of the channel with pseudo-news items such as "Do Democrats cause cancer?" and "Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple" scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Guess the powers-that-be learned something from the Al Franken affair... or maybe they just feared getting into a popularity contest with the likes of the inanimate carbon rod."

Comments

Suing themselves

[Octagon Most]

I heard that interview and Groening said that ultimately the parent corporation decided it did not want to sue itself. They did institute a new rule that the Simpsons, or any other non-news show on Fox, could not use an onscreen information scroll lest the audience become confused and think it was actual news.

Some of the actual lines in that episode

[axolotl_farmer]

...ripped from alt.fan.simpsons

Pointless news crawls up 37 percent

Do democrats cause cancer? Find out more at foxnews.com

Rupert Murdoch: terrific dancer

Dow down 5000 points

Study: 92 percent of democrats are gay

JFK posthumously joins republican party

Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple

Dan Quayle: awesome

Ashcroft declares breast of chicken sandwich "obscene".

Hillary Clinton embarrasses self ???

Bible says Jesus favored capital-gains cut.

Only dorks watch CNN.

Jimmy Carter: old, weak & useless.

Brad Pitt + Albert Einstein = Dick Cheney.

Whom shall we trust?

[YankeeInExile]

This conversation has been going on over in alt.tv.simpsons for a few days now. And the succulent nutmeat is: Apart from class-clown Matt Groening saying so on an NPR interview, there is, as yet, no evidence brought to light that any lawsuit was considered, or forthcoming.

I would not accuse Matt of lying, but perhaps of saying something that is not exactly true for comedic value.

While I cannot imagine Fox filing suit against themselves (as entertaining as Fox v. Fox would be to see on the docket), it is not unimaginable that they might file against Film Roman.

It's not a percieved bias

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

Fox News crew was Krusty For Congress, which mocked the perceived rightward-leanings of the channel with pseudo-news items such as "Do Democrats cause cancer?" and "Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple" scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

It's not percieved, the proof is here. This is a former producer for Fox's News Watch media show giving the dirt on how the bias comes down from Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes everyday in an email nicknamed "The Memo".

Expect to see more info as "The Memo" starts getting leaked. Fox is truly biased, the proof is in information like this. For more analysis, including a rebuttal from Fox, check this out. You might also want to read this commentary over at Editor & Publisher deconstructing Fox's spin on the latest "liberal media" salvo they fired.

Screenshot here

[k98sven]

..the mock version has to be significantly different enough so that an average person would know that it was a parody and not confuse it with the original.

Well, to begin with, it was animated.

I grabbed a screenshot, here.

Now, would -ANYONE- confuse this with the real Fox News?

Re: Spelling error, but Faux News truly misleads

[the_consumer]

I dunno, maybe Bush himself? Is the White House credible enough for you? I realize he didn't use the word imminent, for the obvious reasons (dammit, that's too hard to pronounce, and what exactly does 'innamint' mean anyway, Karl?). You could boil these statements down to that meaning, though:

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.

The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda.

The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.

Stop being such a tool.

Re:Apparently...

[big_gibbon]

Now *that's* informative