Slashdot Mirror
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."
The news ticker belongs to one company? They all look the same to me. Anyway what is fox doing sueing one of their best shows?
-Seriv
are always parodying things. They often parody Fox themselves, but do they sue? No. I can understand Fox News being annoyed at this, but to take such strong action as to sue them is a bit over the top. I might recommend Fox News to tell The Simpsons to get rid of all copies of the episode and to never have it shown, at the most.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
The headline should read: "Faux News Considered Suing Fox's "The Simpsons""
It's perfectly cromulent for FOX to protect their trademarks. And oil slicks DO keep seals young and supple by preventing them from getting old.
NRA4Ever!
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.
"Now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news," he said.
I'm at a loss for words here. I really am.
When life hands you lemons, grab the salt and pass the tequilla...
This illustrates the level to which our legal system has sunk. A TV Show considers suing another TV Show.
From my knowledge of the founding fathers and our legal system as it was meant to be: private citizens are given rights. They can bring suits in court or have suits brought against them to preserve public order. Television shows, and more generally, companies are not, I repeat, NOT citizens!
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
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.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Just watch any day of the week and see for yourself.
It's true!
Really...
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.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
It's news because one branch of Fox came very close to suing one of the most popular, profitable shows ever on the Fox Network. It's news because a supposed news(tm) organization was prepared not only to sue to stop free speech (of the well-supported parody class) but were actually considering doing this against a component of their parent corporation. It's news because the whining, bedwetting, crybabies of Fox News are so supremely "Can dish it out but can't take it" that they were actually going to go toe-to-toe with a cartoon.
It gets them a ton of publicity, and more importantly it emphasizes to the demographic they want how much loathing and contempt the class of people who run ABC, CNN and the New York Times have for their lessers.
So, the lawsuit against Al Franken was a big surprised. You'd think they'd know better than to do something so counterproductively lame. Apparently in this case they did no better.
(Incidentally, it's interesting how after all the ancient Reaganites Ali G had on his show, the only two people I know of who threatened to sue him were Ralph Nader and Naomi Wolf...)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Nerds like the Simpsons.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
..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?
As covered elsewhere, this stunt generates publicity. Your analysis is too simple. If the free advertising surrounding the story outpaces the legal fees, they win, potentially win big.
They took 3 polls with 3334 respondents, gathering data on three misperceptions about the Iraq war
(1) Evidence found for link between Iraq and Al Queda
(2) Evidence found of WMDs in Iraq
(3) Positive world opinion about Iraq war
News_source______FOX_____CBS_____ABC_____NBC_____ CNN___Print_____NPR/
_________________________________________________ _____Sources____PBS
0_misperceptions_20%_____30%_____39%_____45%_____ 45%_____53%_____77%
1_or_more
misperceptions___80______71______61______55______ 55______47______23
Yep, you read that right; fully 80% of Faux watchers had at least 1 of the misperceptions; fully 77% of the NPR/PBS crowd had zero. Wow!
They also attempted to control for demographic variations in the audience. Here's what they say (end of P.15)
I also really like this paragraph (page 16): Isn't that amazing? The more you read the paper, or watch CNN, the better informed you are. But the more you watch Faux News, the more likely you are to be misled!! Now of course these are correlations; they don't prove causation, but they are pretty darned persuasive.This study was commented on in the wash post seattle times twin cities and other places
The one place you I can guarentee you won't find it is fox news!
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
What a bottomless pit of stupidity yes-men media is.
One thing that this study may highlight is that once journalists form a hypothesis, they will tend to seek out the stories that support it.
Journalism isn't science. It isn't out to prove or disprove anything. Unfortunately, most journalists today seem to have forgotten this subtle issue.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Downright spooky to hear Republican spin points show up in discussions like this. This has been a recent spin attempt by the White House.
No, Bush never used the word "imminent". He did, however, very clearly lead the nation to belive that Iraq posed a threat to the US in the short term. Hell Cheney told "Meet the press" that he believed Iraq had "reconstituted" nuclear weapons. What threat could be more imminent than that?
The point is that it's a trick: "Did Bush tell America that Iraq was an 'imminent' threat"... "Yeah, I think so"... "Ha! Gotcha! He never actually used the work imminent!"
Look, a majority of Americans believed Iraq had WMD's, including nuclear weapons. A majority also believed that he was working with (or actually WAS) Osama bin Laden. BUSH deliberately perpetuated this point of view. This is a silly right-wing word game.
One thing that this study may highlight is that once journalists form a hypothesis, they will tend to seek out the stories that support it.
Or that news media organizations tends to hire journalists that lean their direction. Or journalists tend to work for a company that has their general outlook on stuff. What, there shouldn't be leaning in journalism? True dat. But there will probably always be at least a little bit (dang liberals talking about weird shit like anthropic bias and self-selection).
'Course, it could also be that people like to be happy, so they stay away from information that might make them unhappy, after learning where unhappy information comes from. Self-esteem self-selection from a media perspective.
If it leans too far though, it ain't journalism, and calling it 'news' is a stretch. Which is why using Faux is still funny as all hell.
Objectively, it should be the Fox Editorials Shouted At You From On High Channel, but that's tough to fit on a logo.
+&x
What makes you think that Fox News doesn't already know their viewers are morons? That's their key demographic group!
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
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.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
That controls for the effect that the audience of Faux News is more right-wing.
By the way, you're wrong about the factuality of the "Bush never said imminent threat" meme (though of course that doesn't negate your point).
In fact, the National Security Council strategy document released 9/17/02 term "rogue states" (such as Iraq) an "imminent threat." Furthermore Scott McClellan called Iraq an "imminent threat" twice in Feb 2003, though by July he was backtracking. Ari Fleischer labeled Iraq an immediate threat on Jan 21 2003. In some Rose Garden remarks , Bush called Iraq "threat of unique urgency."
I wonder if anyone will venture an opinion as to which is worse, an imminent threat or an immediate threat? And does a "threat of unique urgency" trump them all? Who knows. But I think it's rather silly to try to deny that the Bushies took the threat of Iraq very seriously last fall and worked hard to communicate their concerns to the world.
Here are the excerpts:
Laying the groundwork for intervention in Iraq, the National Security Council released this strategy document: http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nssall.html (also found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss5.html) The National Security Strategy of the United States of America dated September 17, 2002
As far as I can tell, this document is in the official voice of Bush's Security Council. Thus it speaks officially for the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and numerous others. And it's applying the phrase "imminent threat" to an unnamed adversary that can't be anyone else but Iraq. I think that gives the lie to the meme that Bush never said Iraq was an imminent threat. I think it's pretty clear that they all seek to "adapt the concept of imminent threat" to Iraq.
McClellan's use of imminent threat: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20 030210-8.html Excerpts from the Press Gaggle by Scott McClellan, February 10, 2003
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Apparently the way to get modded as insightful is to reply to a post and say that it was insightful. I find that interesting.