Fox News repeats satirical hoax as fact

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Calboner

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From "Fox fooled by 'Muslim ban on padded bras' hoax" (Justin Elliott, Salon.com, March 14, 2011):

A Fox News website has picked up a hoax story about an Islamic council in Pakistan protesting the use of padded and colorful bras and presented it as fact. . . .

The sify.com story linked by Fox cites a "report" from yet another site called Roznama Jawani.

Roznama Jawani, in turn, appears to be a Pakistani version of The Onion, featuring such stories as "Karachi Preparing a Huge Ass Bat to Beat the Shit Out of Kamran Akmal," "Altaf Hussain Challenges Imran Khan to a Rap Battle to Settle Differences," and "Man From Peshawar Sues Red Bull. Says he has no wings!"
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:laughing:
 
Calboner

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It seems that the egg is not entirely, or even mostly, on the face of Fox News. They got the story from an Indian news publication called Sify.com, which mistook the original article for a genuine news report. (Sify.com has replaced the original article with a correction, but the original can be seen in a Google cache). I have no doubt that if I had seen the original Sify.com article, I would have believed it. There is nothing in what it reports happening that I would put past a gathering of Muslim clerics.

In fact, even if I had seen the hoax article by itself (to which no link was provided by Sify.com), provided that I did not read beyond the first two paragraphs and did not notice the obviously altered photograph that accompanies it, I probably would have had no inkling that the article was satirical. It is only in the third paragraph that the details start looking suspicious:

“Padded bras are evil as they make the breasts look bigger and perky”, said one of the protesters. “Only devil women show off private parts. Muslim women should be as humble about them as they can. In fact they should be ashamed of their breasts, both of them.” . . .

The third employee of the store who was on a break before the protest began, joined the protesters and was cheered up on by the crowd after she announced, “I will not wear these sinful, men-attracting padded bras that make my jugs look juicy.” She then ripped out her bra and threw it on the ground where the protesters stomped on it repeatedly. She was later thrown an abaya by someone in the crowd.
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Nonetheless, one would expect a news organization with pretenses to professionalism to make some effort to find confirmation of a story before repeating it.

PS. The "huge-ass bat" story is pretty funny. Be sure to look at the second photograph. Until I saw the article, I didn't understand that "bat" was meant in the sense of a sporting implement (namely a cricket bat) rather than the animal.
 
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Bbucko

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Calboner said:
Nonetheless, one would expect a news organization with pretenses to professionalism to make some effort to find confirmation of a story before repeating it.
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I worked for about 18 months for a political consulting group until the great recession caused them to lay me off in early 2009. Among the many things I did for them was research and locate stories of interest for several different newsletters we produced for their various clients, plus a weekly newsletter for the consultant group itself (two principals and li'l' me). I subscribed to several different feeds and bookmarked various issue-specific (usually disability-oriented) blogs; all together this work took about 20 hours of each week, as it was quite detailed.

Each newsletter had several different topics the client wanted links for, and the client expected to choose between 3-4 stories before selecting the one (or perhaps two) that would actually be summarized, partially quoted and linked to in their newsletter, which I'd then format (with appropriate pix) and finally post.

The point is that I couldn't ever just supply a link and publish it willy-nilly; there was always at least the client who needed to approve of the story (from many) in addition to my having researched and confirmed its veracity myself. And I was a writer/researcher, not a journalist, and the clients were either my bosses or a non-profit 501(c)(3)-type organization, not a "major news source".

If I could get it right on my PC from home, you'd think they wouldn't have a problem, either.
 
Calboner

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Bbucko said:
The point is that I couldn't ever just supply a link and publish it willy-nilly; there was always at least the client who needed to approve of the story (from many) in addition to my having researched and confirmed its veracity myself. And I was a writer/researcher, not a journalist, and the clients were either my bosses or a non-profit 501(c)(3)-type organization, not a "major news source".

If I could get it right on my PC from home, you'd think they wouldn't have a problem, either.
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I remain confident that Fox News maintains the highest standards of copy-and-paste journalism.
 
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JulieINTampa said:
Funny how Fox gets the libbies panties in a knot.
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It's even funnier that some so-called conservative/teabagger types can't contribute a single thing to the Politics section beyond an ignorant taunt about liberals. Seems as if nobody could have a critique on any political issue from the left without your usual knee-jerk trolling. Can't admit that Fox fucked up here, eh? It's a major tell, toots... REALLY it is.
 
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