Monday, June 04, 2007

What I learned at Fox NewsThe Uh-Oh Face

The quote was so explosive that Susan Estrich couldn't resist using it in her syndicated column.

The topic: "Is there anything Mitt Romney won't say or do to try to win the Republican nomination?"

Picking up on a zinger that John McCain had delivered to his presidential rival, Estrich, who managed Michael Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign, found a retort online from the Romney camp. She wrote:

"Besides, who is McCain to talk? 'Why don't you go cry about torture some more, old man,' Romney's spokesman is quoted as saying in response. 'When we're in charge, we're going to nonlethally stress the hell out of you in Gitmo #15.'

" 'Old man'? " she wrote. "Ouch. Accusing a man who spent years in a North Vietnam prison of 'cry[ing]about torture' and threatening to 'stress the hell' out of him?"

When the column was sent out, an editor at Michigan's Lansing State Journal, Derek Melot, thought the quote was so outrageous that he wondered why he hadn't heard it before. After an online search, he found that it had come from the satirical Web site Wonkette -- and was completely invented. Creators Syndicate, which handles Estrich's column, quickly sent out a "mandatory correction," and the gaffe apparently never got into print.Estrich, who teaches law at the University of Southern California, says she thought of attributing the quote to Wonkette but figured many readers would be unfamiliar with the site. She says she used the formulation "is quoted as saying" because "I worry about this all the time when I rely on secondary sources. . . .

"I guess I shouldn't consider Wonkette to be 'reporting,' but that's the problem in our brave new world. Where I come from, there's a problem with making up quotes and attributing them to campaign spokesmen, but I guess that's very old-fashioned of me."

After FOX News Channel chief political correspondent Carl Cameron wrote a fake news story mocking Senator John Kerry that was published October 1 on FOXNews.com, blogger and journalist Joshua Micah Marshall posed a question to the network: "Why did comments very similar to Cameron's fabrications come up again and again from FOX commentators on debate night?"

As Marshall noted on October 1, the story as it originally appeared -- part of a FOXNews.com "Trail Tales" report containing several other items -- falsely attributed quotes to Kerry in an attempt to ridicule him over a manicure, which Cameron reported he received on September 30. Later that day, FOX News Channel issued a retraction and an apology, and the fake story was removed from the "Trail Tales" report. According to a New York Times article, FOX News Channel spokesman Paul Schur said: "This was a stupid mistake and a lapse in judgment, and Carl [Cameron] regrets it."

Following are some of the fabricated quotations appearing in Cameron's fake story:

"Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" Kerry said Friday.

"Women should like me! I do manicures," Kerry said.

"I'm metrosexual -- he's a cowboy," the Democratic candidate said of himself and his opponent.

But Cameron's fake news story was not the first sign of FOX's fixation on the purported manicure. Prior to the first presidential debate, Cameron reported on Special Report with Brit Hume that Kerry got "a pre-debate manicure." FOX News Channel hosts and contributors quickly picked up on Cameron's report, discussing the reported manicure five separate times in the three hours preceding the debate. No other cable news channel mentioned the topic.

On Tuesday, Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends” aired at least eight segments on a purported “news” story that was actually a parody article written by a publication similar to The Onion.

The backstory: 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 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.

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

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…or 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!”