Since its available as a free Creative Commons-licensed PDF, I downloaded Kembrew McCleod’s new book Freedom of Expression. Unfortunately I get less than two pages into the book before noticing that McCleod’s book perpetuates a mini-hoax that would have been easy for him to do a little research and debunk.
Back in 2003, Fox News briefly tried to sue Al Franken when Franken used the words “Fair and Balanced” in the title of his book. Fox was stupid for even trying and received a lot of negative publicity over it.
Matt Groening appeared on “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross about that time and started a mini-hoax by telling Gross that Fox News had threatened to sue The Simpson’s over a satirical news crawl that The Simpson’s placed on a cable news parody.
Groening later claimed he meant to be satirical, but regardless Groening’s claim was reported by numerous newspapers as if it were true.
But The Simpsons’ producers released a statement the next day, saying,
Matt was being satirical and certainly there was never any issue between the show and Fox News. We regret any confusion.
By then the hoax was everywhere, however, and Kembrew repeats it on the second page of his book,
It [Fox News] also targeted The Simpsons (which airs on its sister network) for parodying the news channel’s right-wing slant. During one episode, the cartoon imitated the Fox News ticker, running crawling headlines . . .
Fox News eventually backed down, opting not to file a lawsuit against the show. . . It’s probably the first time that media consolidation has actually enabled freedom of expression.
No, its probably a hoax that we’ll be hearing even more of thanks to Kembrew repeating it in his book.
And, this fits into my constant complaints about fact checking. Even if it appears to be from a credible source, if it sounds to good to be true — and Fox threatening to sue itself fits into that category — you have to go the extra mile in confirming it. A simple call or e-mail to The Simpsons or Fox would have cleared the matter up and prevented the further dissemination of this hoax.
Update: Kembrew, to his credit, says he did try to contact Groening’s production company.
Source:
Freedom of Expression. Kembrew McLeod, Doubleday, December 7, 2004.
Names & Faces. Washington Post, October 31, 2003.