FoxNation.com Doesn't Seem to 'Get' The Onion

[PeaceNikki]

http://gawker.com/5699648/foxnationcom-doesnt-seem-to-get-the-onion

Fox News subsidiary Fox Nation posted an excerpt from a satirical Onion article in the "culture" section of its site on Friday. The only problem: They didn't tell anyone it was a joke.

As Mediaite notes, if you head on over to Fox Nation's Culture page, you'll see a bunch of real news articles: "Rush Outraged At Obama's Thanksgiving Proclamation," "Woman Wears Bikini to LAX," "Adam Lambert Smokes Pot on Stage." And then there's "Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail":


Now, obviously, "real" is a relative term when it comes to this stuff. But each of the other stories on the site is based on things that actually happened. Obama actually does have a pastry chef! Peggy Noonan actually did say something stupid! Even the chain-letter "article" "A Thanksgiving Message to All 57 States" makes clear within the "article" itself that it's satire. The Onion link just excerpts the first two paragraphs and provides a link. Wild claims—"Obama's grandmother 'prays he converts to Islam'"—are sourced within the headlines themselves (the last time Fox Nation linked to the Onion, they sourced it the same way). Fox Nation is a news site. A shitty news site, yes—but a news site nonetheless.

Of course, Fox Nation—a conservative community/news aggregation site operated by Fox News—is not exactly, uh, a shining beacon of journalistic integrity. A few weeks ago, the site printed an excerpt of a USA Today article entitled "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans" under the headline "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed U.S. General." So maybe it's not surprising that they're a little bit reckless with their headlines. (Who isn't, sometimes?) But when you're dealing with a commenter base as consistently stupid as Fox Nation's, don't you have a responsibility to clearly specify what's satire and what's, you know, at least sort of real?

:eyes:

[Edweird]

1. Full of WIN.

[PeaceNikki]

2. Call me cynical but...

do they INTENTIONALLY spread lies knowing full well that their dumb audience will believe and repeat them?

I think so.

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. Of course.

The line determining what to print isn't between accuracy and inaccuracy. It's between plausible and implausible. The more crap they dump on the public, the bigger the plausibility envelope.

[begin_within]

6. That's all they know how to do.

[snagglepuss]

8. +1

[Edweird]

11. A fake news corp. plagiarizing a satire news website. It doesn't get any better than that.

It's a troll infinity loop.

[zbdent]

3. 1: Fox is not bound by the law to report the truth ... they won the court case where they could LIE

2: Fox IS a joke (but that's wayyyyy too easy)

3: Fox knows that their viewers will take this as GOSPEL ... which leads to ...

4: Fox reported the $200,000,000 / Day trip as GOSPEL ...

[PeaceNikki]

9. Republicans and humor - going together like chinchillas and skee-ball since 1861.

[YOY]

5. They don't need to.

Their viewers are idiots with the attention spans of gnats.

[tomg]

7. What is most hilarious is that

many of the commenters over at FoxNation don't see it as a joke.

Best comment "I can't seem to confirm this story anywhere except Onion. If it is false, somebody needs to go to jail for it. If it is true, this dude is crazier than an outhouse rat and needs some serious professional help! Someone needs to get to the bottom of this story and produce some verifiable facts to decide which way it should go."

Actually, far more serious is that with willful dissemination of parody news as actual, Fox knows damn well it is getting it out into the public as "news," that most of the morons who go to Fox will believe it and spread it, and then, Fox gets to say "we knew it was a parody." Frankly, this is, to me, more despicable than their open partisanship. This really subverts everything a news organization should stand for in a democracy ( not that Fox is a news organization). Quite honestly, I know that I will be hearing this as "news" and a sign of President Obamas "mental state" from some idiots I sometimes have to deal with.

[PeaceNikki]

10. It would be funny,

if it weren't true.

[tomg]

12. Actually, you're right.

For me, it is a case of seeing something so inane, I have to shake my head in amazement.