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

news ticker belongs to one company?

[seriv]

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

Re:news ticker belongs to one company?

[Zeinfeld]

Actually, they aren't sueing them, they "considered legal action".

The history here is that the head of Fox News, Roger Aisles is a long time Republican activist and partisan. He was put in charge of the news operation for the sole purpose of slanting the news to the extreme right.

To get an idea of what really goes on at Fox take a read of the experiences of people who have worked there. Every day a note goes arround called 'The Memo' which contains the Republican party messages of the day. If you do not toe the line then you get fired. This is a bad thing since experience working at Fox news does not exactly enhance your resume when applying for a job with the real media.

You can tell this is going on because Fox was even able to report Bush's claim that the Whitehouse did not order the 'Mission Accomplished' banner with a straight face.

So yes it is completely believable that the executives running this bubble world outfit would have so little clue about the real world as to threaten to sue another Murdoch production - in this case a production that can if it choose defect at will to another station and a production that makes money rather than looses it hand over fist.

Fox News does well in the ratings but very poorly with advertisers. The problem is that its core democratic of poor middle aged southern white racist men do not have much in the way of buying power. Advertisers much prefer to reach 18-35 audiences, gays, professionals, etc. in short pretty much everyone who is unlikely to watch Fox. In fact advertising on Fox News actually trades at a discount to other broadcasts reaching the same demographic because advertisers know that many of the demographics they do want are actually less likely to buy a product they see advertised on a channel they associate with biggotry.

The joke on the GOP and the likes of Bill O'Really is that Murdoch has no ideological commitments only business interests. He is quite happy running a Pro-Bejing communist sympathetic news channel on his Asian Star TV and he does not broadcast the BBC signal which might offend the dictators. In the UK Murdoch is quite happy to support Tony Blair's government, provided they do not threaten his economic interests. Murdoch undoubtedly considers his US channels in the same way, if Bush looses power in such a way that a return of Republican government looks to be unlikely in the near future then Fox news will flip flop to the left.

Spelling Error...

[computerme]

The headline should read: "Faux News Considered Suing Fox's "The Simpsons""

Re:Spelling Error...

[Slack3r78]

I'll agree on the majors having slight liberal slant, but Fox News is more than 'slightly' right-leaning. You're talking about a network that goes out of its way to find the dumbest, most extreme left wingers to bring on the air so their hosts can ridicule them. Bill O'Reilly's shouting matches and mic cutting are pretty much SOP over Fox - they try to give the appearance of letting both sides tell their story, but in reality, are only interested in their side of the story. The other networks generally at least give conservatives a chance to speak without treating them like bafoons. That alone makes them far more centerist than Fox will ever be in my mind.

Re:Spelling Error...

[saforrest]

Yup...I see CBS, NBC, ABC...the major network news, and CNN on cable as all having from a slight to major liberal slant.


Maybe it's because I'm Canadian, but I find this belief in liberal slant in mainstream U.S. media as incomprehensible to me as the arguments of the gun lobby. (I'm not equating the two, by the way.)

I read or watch CNN fairly often, and there seems to be an undertone to all the coverage that I would hardly call liberal. For instance, while Fox News might directly attack a Democrat for suggesting tax cuts are a bad idea, CNN will simply quote him, while still subtly suggesting that most Americans would want the tax cut.

The most telling evidence, though, is the fearful lack of coverage of foreign events by the mainstream American networks, excepting of course the Middle East. I was astounded to see the difference between regular cable CNN, and CNN International, which has reasonably decent coverage of stuff in Africa, Asia, etc. And I don't accept the argument that CNN is simply showing what its domestic audience wants to see, and has no free will in the matter.

Re:Spelling Error...

[TGK]

I suppose karma should be used for something....

Most residents of the United States have fallen into the falacy of the much touted Liberal Bias In The Media (caps intentional).

We've had it cramed down our throats by every radio talk show zelot, republican candidate, and conservitive figure we're willing to listen to.

It's simply not the case. Are most journalists liberal? Unquestionably. Education is one of the strongest factors in determining political viewpoints (next to family and wealth) and most journalists hold at least a BA/BS.

Nonetheless, this does not mean that the media as a whole is liberal. General Motors employs thousands of union workers who, for the most part, have liberal leanings and vote democrat. Would you therefore assume that the automotive interests of General Motors are represented by the Democratic Party? [Fact, GM consistanly supports conservitive candidates above liberal ones, all other factors being equal].

The companies we're talking about aren't interested in the Liberal Agenda. Do you think AOL Time Warner wants to see more regulation of the media? Do you think MSNBC (note the MS there) wants to see anti-monopolistic measures taken in the software industry?

When the BBC ran the story on how the Jessica Lynch rescue wasn't all it was cracked up to be did you see it in the US media? Of course not... That isn't to say it didn't run, you'll find several versions of it with a quick google search... but it wasn't exactly above the fold.

MSNBC is even debuting a made for TV version of the "rescue." Executives have repeatedly declined comment as to which version of events they'll be displaying.

So here's my question. If Bill Clinton had presented blatently false information in the State of the Union Address, acted on that information and gone to war on the basis of it, lied about what happened IN the war all the while systematicly dismanteling the individual rights of the US Population... if all that had happened, don't you think the media would have had a bit more to shout about than a stain on a blue dress?

Clinton was impeached for lieing before Congress. The Bush Administration also lied before Congress. Then it went on to commit the country to a war on the same lies. Where is the special investigative council? Where are the media watch dogs?

Liberal Media indeed.... in an election between a stiff and a coke head who did the media favor? The coke head. Go figgure....

What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

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.

Re:Suing themselves

[nearlygod]

Yeah, because their are so many news shows that are animated. I can understand the possible confusion.

Re:Suing themselves

[Blondie-Wan]

Yeah, because their are so many news shows that are animated. I can understand the possible confusion.

Well, in fairness, we are talking about Fox News viewers.

Re:Suing themselves

[Lumpy]

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.

If your viewers are so dim as to think that the cartoon animation on the screen is the real news.. I think you have more problems that you realize...

Re:Suing themselves

[dave_mcmillen]

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.

Aren't they afraid that the Fox news ticker itself might cause confusion and be mistaken for actual news?

ahem...

[isfuglen]

"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.

Re:ahem...

[MrLint]

Well lets think about this quote for a second. If we assume that Fox news is actually concerned that its viewers will confused a cartoon like the simpsons for a real news broadcast , it really says hat FNC thinks their viewers are in fact incredibly stupid. Particularly if you look at what went by on the news ticker .Who other than a fox news viewer would think those headlines were real?

PS - i wore my asbestos underwear today.

Re:ahem...

[Hard_Code]

"it really says hat FNC thinks their viewers are in fact incredibly stupid."

Either that, or that it is hard to distinguish Fox News, from cartoon 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 the ticker

[poptones]

It's the "fake news" part. Fox has the trademark on scrolling fake news reports at the bottom of the screen.

Just watch any day of the week and see for yourself.

It's true!

Really...

Re:It's not the ticker

[iJed]

Why is this moderated as funny? It seems far more insightful to me.

Re:Look where we are headed

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

I guess Fox'd win the case easily :) I wonder if they'd have to pay themselves damages.

Fox income = damages - lawyer fees
Fox loss = damages

Fox net gain = - lawyer fees

That's one hell of a business strategy.

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.

I'll explain this, slowly

[burgburgburg]

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.

Re:BEEN SAID BEFORE: Why is this News for Nerds?

[twoshortplanks]

Nerds like the Simpsons.

Re:Look where we are headed

[poot_rootbeer]

Television shows, and more generally, companies are not, I repeat, NOT citizens!

Boy, you're in for a shock when you get to page 2 of your Corporate Law textbook...

Re: Spelling error, but Faux News truly misleads

[elwinc]

There's a study out that correlates misperceptions about the Iraq war with news source. You can read the whole .pdf if you like.

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)

Looking just at Republicans, the average rate for the three key misperceptions was 43%. For Republican Fox viewers, however the average rate was 54% while for Republicans who get their news from PBS- NPR the average rate is 32%. This same pattern obtains with Democrats and independents.

I also really like this paragraph (page 16):

Misperceptions According to Level of Attention to News
While it would seem that misperceptions are derived from a failure to pay attention to the news, overall, those who pay greater attention to the news are no less likely to have misperceptions. Among those who primarily watch Fox, those who pay more attention are more likely to have misperceptions. Only those who mostly get their news from print media, and to some extent those who primarily watch CNN, have fewer misperceptions as they pay more attention.

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!

It gets better

[JCCyC]

From the Yahoo News link:

"'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 [Groening] said."

What a bottomless pit of stupidity yes-men media is.

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.

No, they controlled for right-winger effect

[elwinc]

No, they controlled for the effect of demographics. Let me again present you with the paragraph on demographics:

Looking just at Republicans, the average rate for the three key misperceptions was 43%. For Republican Fox viewers, however the average rate was 54% while for Republicans who get their news from PBS- NPR the average rate is 32%. This same pattern obtains with Democrats and independents.

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

For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat-most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack.

We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries. Rogue states and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction-weapons that can be easily concealed, delivered covertly, and used without warning.

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

QUESTION: What about NATO's role? Belgium now says it will veto any attempt to provide help to Turkey to defend itself. Is this something the administration can live with, or is it a major obstacle?

MR. McCLELLAN: Two points. We support the request under Article IV of Turkey. And I think it's important to

Apparently...

[eMartin]

Apparently the way to get modded as insightful is to reply to a post and say that it was insightful. I find that interesting.