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Fox News and Watery Tarts

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In an effort to extend their coverage of protests, Fox News decided to look at Reddit. They found this little nugget and reported it.

The post in question, by someone name Kasplorge, says: “I didn’t vote for Raz. I thought we were an autonomous collective? An anachro-syndicalist commune at the least. We should take turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.

“But of course all the decisions of that officer would have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of internal affairs, or a 2/3 majority in the case of more major issues. Raz can’t simply expect to wield supreme executive power just because someone threw a sword at him.”

The sword should’ve been a clue.

That’s right, Fox News failed to recognize a quote from Monty Python. They took it seriously and reported it as a fact. John Cleese, in the fine tradition of British Comedy, mocked them.

Poll:

What happened?

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Update: To all of you in the comments who have taken offense to us making fun of Fox’s hilarious blooper: why do you feel attacked? You didn’t proofread the blooper, did you? Are you personally responsible for the fact checking at Fox? No? Great then, have a laugh and move on. This article doesn’t make fun of your political views. It makes fun of Fox’s shoddy reporting. Fox News isn’t above being made fun of. Lighten up.

And if it makes you mad, good. Let Fox News know how you feel. Expect a higher standard from your preferred news source.

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Comments

  1. Absolutely someone saw that! My understanding is that even the people who work at Fox News rarely take it seriously (or is that *especially* the people who work there?).

    The question is whether they believed their demographic had seen it. Which they might very well not have, Monty Python being liberal and foreign.

    • Unfortunately, these days news media are awful at fact checking and/or telling the truth.

      • SOME are shoddy. I believe NPR makes a concerted effort to actually report the real news. They have been shown to be fair and balanced.

    • Fox News has been known to grab at just about anything to boast their rhetoric. I just wonder how many fact-checker they go through every year, since I’m sure they will fire whoever that found this little nugget from Reddit.

      Though, I have to say, I’ve watched Monty Python multiple times and I couldn’t place the quote immediately. Too many bits of awesomeness, hard to remember them all.

      • I couldn’t place it either, but “sword”? Hello? Not typical antifa gear, at least for protests. Maybe on RenFest weekends.

        They’re just not interested in accuracy. Sean Hannity’s bogus claim that Trump sent a plane to pick up US service members was debunked literally the day it was made. It stayed up on his page at Fox for months. Zero journalistic ethics, and zero shame.

        • Sure they do, but they’re too busy fact-checking other news networks, and announcing any mistakes to the world.

      • Wouldn’t fact-checkers go against their established business ethics and 5-year business profit/investment planning?

  3. I want to say all the above. If a news broadcaster like Fox can’t seem to get their research, production, and anchor crews together to make sure this was a legitimate news story, they should look stupid. Anyone can post anything and for some reason the national cable news broadcasters think that every story posted online is “news”.

  4. OMG, My son (who is know in his 40s) loved that movie when he was very young. I remember him watching it and explaining the humor to the rest of his friends (ages 6, 7 or so) when they didn’t understand it. 🙂

    • I’ll be honest and say that I don’t know enough about CHAZ. Right now news have to be very dire to break through the brain fog because all the brains are going into writing and a cursory search revealed a lot of info. Not going to sort through it right this second.

      But I support basic fact checking before putting something on the news. The primary responsibility of a journalist is to report facts. The above isn’t an example of journalism. It’s the kind of reporting you expect from a tabloid, sandwiched between a sighting of Elvis and a story of a woman having an alien’s baby.

      • I live in Seattle a few blocks from the CHAZ, and Fox misreporting has been quite — I don’t even know what term to use — disappointing ? breathtaking ?? This Monty Python blooper was at least hilarious, while the digitally altered photos showing the city in flames was deliberately malicious (it isn’t in flames btw).

      • ABC News had a similar (but worse, IMO) incident last year, when they took footage from a Kentucky gun range and advertised it as footage of Turkish forces slaughtering Syrian civilians. Someone at ABC had to crop out the crowd of people holding up their cellphones in the video…

        I agree with y’all. This is funny as heck, regardless of political affiliation. All I can envision is a series of failed fact-check blunders that led to this story making its way to the screen.

      • Umm, didn’t the Murdoch’s own tabloids report on those exact stories? They are now bringing those high journalistic standards to Fox News.

        • LOL! i remember in college we got ahold of at that time a shining example of journalism. Maybe thr Enquirer or something of a similar ilk. On it there was a 10 question quiz that allowed you to identify aliens. we each fit 2 or 3 of the criteria, and sadly, you had to fit at least 7 to qualify as an alien. we did have one college roommate who hit all 10. He was a unique guy!

    • I’m Australian, so relatively removed from the whole CHAZ thing, but I have been watching live coverage of the protests (woke.net) and everything in Seattle has seemed so peaceful, and the consensus from protestors there is that it’s been the most peaceful since police were withdrawn from the area (they left voluntarily).
      Sidenote: apparently they don’t call it CHAZ they call it CHOP (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest) ????

      • Oh, CHOP is a much better name! Occupied Protest sounds much better and more accurate.

      • I believe it is Capital Hill Organized Protest. although some news sites have used Occupied; I guess it sounds more confrontational.

  6. I wasnt sure whether to smirk or facepalm. In the end I just went in search of a shrubbery. (sorry!)
    As a Brit I’m not sure of the validity and follower of Fox News so its going to be interesting to read the poll.

  7. I was looking for “none of the above” because, IMO, Fox News was doing what they view as furthering the conservative cause by taking innocent information and twisting it to promote hate, anger and dissent among people in general.

  8. And here I though you had news about actual cute foxes – maybe some fun pictures. Oh well, this was great too. As another commenter said, ‘priceless and so sad’

  9. I think that most of the conservative press thinks the “true believers” will swallow anything they put out and in many cases they are right. The more egregious reports often reinforce their readers / listeners prejudices and thus make them feel “right”.
    In search of headlines, Fox News has already gotten in trouble for altered and misleading images. This is more of the same.

    Of course, being female, I am not the preferred audience for this propaganda. I keep asking myself “How do they get away with this garbage?” So far, I haven’t figured it out.
    The Civil Rights movement of the 60’s was a paragon of respect and civility compared to this.
    Yes, I remember it. Yes, I supported civil rights then, too. Why are we having to start over with a new bunch of idiots? Some of them are the same idiots, but really folks – Haven’t we learned *anything*?

  10. OMG, I’m crying????

    It’s sad that my dad watches this news network because I know I would be losing braincells if I watched any of their content.

    • I am forced to listen to it at work. A high management official is a big fan and ordered that the break room TV’s all be tuned into FOX 24/7. My office is next door. I keep my door closed to mute it, but sometimes turn on music to drown it out.

  11. You would have thought they would have looked at the phrase ‘anachro-syndicalist commune’ and known something was up. Here’s why Reddit should not be a source for a TV news story.

  12. I feel like they just think their viewers are all ridiculous rubes. It is infuriating – their viewers are real people who look to them for news and they just dish this crap up.

    • The lack of journalistic integrity is the fault of the viewers. It’s been shown over and over that Fox will say anything to push a conservative agenda and don’t allow facts to get in their way. If their viewers wanted the truth they would watch something else.

        • As much as I deeply loathe Fox news, they did not in fact sue for the right to lie:

          https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-skews/

          However, they have opted to register with the FCC as an entertainment entity, not a news entity.

          And we can thank Regan for dismantling some of the very strict requirements on new entities which had previously forced them to do better on fact-checking and verifying that the news was, indeed, news.

  14. I live in Seattle. The folks who have taken their fake news seriously about the situation here is laughable.

  16. This is both hilarious and scary. A few years back (2015?) Fox reported that Birmingham (England) was a “no-go” area for non-muslims, which is of course a complete and utter lie.

    People started to create their own “facts” under #foxnewsfacts and got it trending in the UK, there were some brilliant ones!

  17. OMG…I have to watch that movie again! It’s been too many years and I have forgotten how hilarious it is. Thanks for the laugh break from reviewing an archeological technical report!

  18. Jesus H. Christ! That’s sad and hilarious at the same time. But, that’s what the news have become. Serious journalism is dead. RIP.

    I’ll quote something I saw online recently: “The most exercise I get nowadays is shaking my head in disbelief.”

    SO TRUE!!! Sadly…

    • It’s the 24-hour news cycle. When you have to fill that much time, you start filling it with junk. I can’t remember who said it, or where I read it, but someone describing today’s news compared to the golden age of journalism said something very close to “once upon a time, a news report would read like this: ‘Republicans claim the road is 30 miles long. Democrats claim the road is 20 miles long. We measured, and the road is 25,8 miles long.’ Nowadays its ‘Republicans claim the road is 30 miles long. Democrats claim the road is 20 miles long. What does the man on the street think? What about Twitter? Who can really say how long a road is?’”

      • Don’t forget: “Does the road even exist or is it made up by (fill in the blank here)?” ????

      • What’s odd to me, is that a 24 hr news cycle shouldn’t be that difficult to fill. There are billions of people in this world, a 240 hr news cycle couldn’t hold all the news going on worldwide every day. If they’d just broaden their horizons a bit, and stop rehashing situations that haven’t shown any fundamental change, we might actually get some varied content.

    • +1 ???? Well, that and jumping up and down, pacing and screaming at the TV, every time Agent Orange comes on.

    • Well said. However we are living in a twilights zone now. Nothing surprises me anymore!

  19. I absolutely love that we are pretty much at a three way tie for the explanation of how that got on the air.

  20. Soooo many straight lines. Resisting.. Resisting…..

    That movie, at one time, was a test my son used to see if a girl he was dating had the quality to get it.

    • He he, I ended up with a partner who loves that stuff while not being appreciative myself – it can work 😉 Still have not seen most of it, but I can give the expected response to quite a bit of it XD

  21. The math is sightly wrong.

    Nobody at Fox News had ever seen the Holy Grail (33%, 64 Votes)
    Someone had seen the Holy Grail and let Martha MacCallum make an idiot of herself for fun (33%, 64 Votes)
    They knew and did it anyway, because they think their viewers are stupid (33%, 64 Votes)

    3 times 33% doesn’t add up to 100%
    64 isn’t divisible by 3, it had to be 21 + 21 + 22. If rounded it is 21 = 33%, 22=34%.

    • Actually I think they each received 64 votes at that time. Not that there were a total of 64 votes.

    • Jandar, you are perfectly right and follower of Ann Richards who said something like, … Lay all the Economists in a row and they can not reach a conclusion.

  22. My guess is: “They knew and did it anyway, because they think their viewers are stupid.”

    OR, since Fox News folks seem to not have a sense of humor, maybe they never appreciated the genius of Monty Python. ????????‍♀️

  23. When I had heard about this it made me laugh. This is what happens when you don’t take time to make sure you have the facts.

  25. I mean, I’m fully convinced that no one with any authority at Fox News would have the sense of humor to appreciate Monty Python. They’re like the jerks in high school that made fun of me for reading Terry Brooks and “that nerd stuff”. (Yes, I just dated myself there for the younger crowd. Once upon a time, nerd stuff was considered the ultimate in uncool.)

    • I said something similar. Fox News folks were not the audience to appreciate Monty Python. ????

    • I hear you on that. 🙂

      The jerks in high school left me alone when they found out I was in AP Anatomy and Physiology class and could turn their faces green when I told them about bodily functions.

  26. Part of me thinks “hilarious” but most of me feels sad that it is such irresponsible reporting, and that so many people think Fox News reporting is gospel.
    I could say more but don’t want to go down that road.

  28. I mean surely someone at Fox News knows what reddit is. I feel that they thought it would make a good story and know that the majority of their viewers have probably never visited reddit much less heard of it. It’s almost as bad as when you see people repost articles from the onion believing they are true. People love to find something to be outraged over!

  29. As the ladies at church would say “Bless their hearts, they did try.”

    There are days when some things make my head hurt.

    • You’re from the South, I’m guessing.

      I love picturing the Church Ladies saying that!

      Thank you!!!

    • Why do I get a picture of Dana Carvey saying something similar as the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live? ????????????????

  30. I used to think “I can’t even…”, but eventually…

    I miss journalistic standards and

    accountability for ethics violations.

  31. How Roger Ailes transformed American politics into a contact sport:
    His credo was, “People don’t want to Be informed, they want to Feel informed.
    We’ll tell them How To Feel.”
    Talk about dark humor – Your post would be sooo hilarious if it weren’t so horrifying, like theV.P. who’s in charge of pandemic management, lying on
    national TV about the Covid numbers in Oklahoma flattening, and inviting
    60,000 people to come to an indoor rally in Tulsa. 60,000 people who don’t care if they spread the disease to everyone they come in contact with back in their hometowns and everyone in Tulsa, like the people in the service industries.
    You only have to loose 1 loved one, as I did in March, to know that 1 person is too many to lose.
    This is not my opinion – this is verifiable fact. You can actually Watch Him Say It in a press release which is available on the internet.
    My brother-in law is constantly saying, “It has to be true, I saw it on Fox.”

      • Thanks, Breann and MJ ❤️
        Just when you think no-one is reading the comments…Looks like today everyone is.
        My neighbor just said today that the Covid positive count is Only up to 5% of the county population.
        That’s what fired me up.
        The governor in Florida is as oblivious as …

        • I’m so sorry for your loss Chris.

          Sometimes it’s hard to know what to feel about the pandemic. I had heard that hospitals were receiving federal kickbacks if people “died from corona”. I didn’t believe it. Then my sister, who is an RN with over 30 years experience at the same hospital said it’s true. Now I don’t know what to think about the numbers being reported.

  32. I have seen some posts by those who are so outraged at the situation up there. They believed it lock, stock and barrel without checking anything

  34. I feel bad for Americans. Come to Canada. It’s colder but most of us are nice and welcoming.

    • I’ve thought about it. You’ve got a beautiful country, and I’ve never met anyone there that was not friendly and welcoming.

      • My grandmother was a Canadian citizen, and I said if Trump won the last election I was moving to Canada. I didn’t then, but if he wins this time, I really think that I will do it. I just can’t stand to watch him dismantle this country and decades of progress. Further, the damage done will carry forward for years past his term. It’s sad and disgusting.

    • My grandmother was a Canadian citizen, and I said if Trump won the last election I was moving to Canada. I didn’t then, but if he wins this time, I really think that I will do it. I just can’t stand to watch him dismantle this country and decades of progress. Further, the damage done will carry forward for years past his term. It’s sad and disgusting.

    • The people at the Daily Show have asked that you invade our country to straighten us out and give us access to your healthcare.

      • As a New Zealander I laughed yesterday when I heard there’s a petition going in the UK to declare war on NZ then immediately surrender so that they’ll be subject to our government. But I’m not sure Jacinda wants to deal with brexit as well as COVID. On a serious note, when trying to find out what was going on with BLM protests in the states I tried a number of news sites including PBS, CNN and Fox. Is there any site that has unbiased reporting? Or do they all pander to their demographics? It feels very like falling into an “echo chamber”. But hey, it sells. And news Seems to be as all about what sells these days – even here 🙁

  35. My mother in law saw it. Called to complain about state of affairs. I let her son tell her it was a Monty Python quote. She argued, because she has seen the movies. In fact she introduced them to my husband.
    So he had to pull out the movie do a video chat to show her.
    To which she replied, well its the first ever mistake they’ve made that she has been aware of. No big deal. ????????‍♀️????????‍♀️.
    Its pretty sad.

  36. It isn’t like the other news organizations never made bloopers. Some with much worse consequences, then being laughed at.

    • Can you give an example of a blooper that resulted in more severe consequences? Are we talking about Jade Helm or Pizzagate?

      • Nick Sandmann, while not a blooper per se but still a horrible thing that happened to him

    • I politely disagree.

      Yes, everyone makes mistakes. Responsibility is admitting your error and taking corrective action. (And, if you’re an adult apologizing.)

      But, no matter how this situation was handled afterwards, sourcing a news story from Reddit is low. So was FNC running photoshopped pictures this week. https://www.snopes.com/ap/2020/06/13/fox-news-removes-altered-photos-of-seattle-protest-zone/

      This isn’t a politically charged statement. I hold the same standards for my kids’ school essays. And, they’re nine and twelve years old. Adults should do better.

      • Not to mention Fox News covering the protests shows only those looting and rioting and claiming de facto that most of the protestors are violent,when 98% are peaceful;funny fox News didn’t show when protestors have helped protect cops being attacked or don’t show where counter protesters to BLM are seen brandishing weapons at protestors (several of them actually aiming them as if to shoot) or several cases where they assaulted and threw protestors to the ground,including some 65 yr old guy here in NJ throwing a woman to the ground,guess Fox figured he was a hero.

    • When other news organizations make bloopers and realize it they retract what they said. Remember the story with the kid with the red hat from some prep school on a trip to DC supposedly harassing a native American guy? When it turned out it wasn’t just the kid,bit rather the native American guy acted like an whole, the media retracted it,apologized. When 60 minutes ran a piece of George W Bush about him.getting into the air national guard that implied he never even served,when it came out the reporting was shoddy the network apologized and several people including Rather were fired.

      Meanwhile Fox News outright lies distorts things and never apologizes, they continued to claim Hussein was behind 9/11 for years,still claimed the Clintons were behind the Foster suicide a decade later, claimed Hillary allowed Benghazi to happen even after a GOP led inquiry said she didn’t, and claims there was widespread voter fraud even now,when the GoP congress spent 10s of millions on an investigation…and found 60 cases,many of them Trump supporters out of like 100 million votes cast.

      Organizations have done surveys of people,asking them questions about things in the news. They found that people whose only or prime source of news was Fox News did worse than people who reported they didn’t watch the news at all or read it. Fox News is not the Wall St journal,journal articles are journalism (their editorial page on the other hand,well). The real problem with Fox is they have blurred the line between news and commentary, they basically let Hannity,Ingraham and other on air personalities substitute for the news, they make claims that have no facts, no evidence and make it sound like news, like hydroxychloquinone cures Covid (note to Fox,FDA even w Trump appointees running it have banned the use of it for covid,doesn’t work and it is dangerous).

      Spreading conspiracy theories as fact and presenting twisted facts are not news, it is propoganda. Some Fox News people are trying,I don’t always agree with Chris Wallace but he is willing to call stuff as BS, to look at facts. And all I have to say about Fox is look at their claims about Covid being a myth or a hoax, that it is the flu,that the lockdown was a mistake,several states have opened up including Texas and Arizona,and they are facing a medical crisis, all over the state ICU and hospital admissions are getting near capacity…Houston is at 90% w icu, and they have a ton of hospitals there.

  37. Fox News isn’t journalism, it’s infotainment.
    I grew up on Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and the news was BORING, because let’s face it — the basic facts like who, what, when, where and how are very dry and cn’t be disputed. The one thing they didn’t try to report is motive (why). Now, “why” is front and center on cable infotainment networks.
    Anyone who is definitive about a motive, is pushing an agenda.
    Most of the time, I can’t even tell why I do things, let alone anyone else, so it’s mind-boggling when spinmeisters sit at a desk in front of a camera and offer opinions as some kind of factual evidence.

    • I’d say that most “news” on cable TV falls into the info-tainment category nowadays. Every one of them has an agenda and narrative they pursue with no true challenge to that narrative being entertained.

      It’s one reason why we’re being so easily polarized.

      FCC used to have a rule about how much influence over media any particular company or set of companies could own. Be nice if they updated that rule for the modern age to encourage some more diversity of thought–and non-party-affiliated viewpoints.

        • Gotta love Laura Trevelyan and KattyKay!
          There’s a whole world out there… Who’d’a thought!

        • In all seriousness, people should be getting their news from at least 3 separately owned sources in 3 different countries, at least one of which is non-English speaking. I can’t tell you how much I have found flat out ignored or misreported from the most credible English-speaking sources. The contempt that the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada hold for non-English-speaking countries is breathtaking. When I moved to Austria in 2011, I thought I was doing very well getting my news from NPR, the BBC, Al Jazeera English and a few others. Adding in JUST the French and German press (even as filtered through my husband) amazed me.

          In the early 00’s, I read a couple years of the “Censored ”, and was astonished, and when they went dark for a year, and I thought they were no longer being printed, I reached out to the BBC & Al
          Jazeera English. Now that I know they just skip some years, I have a lot of catching up to do.

      • Before cable, the FCC had a rule requiring the big three networks to have a minimum number of hours broadcasting the news, and the networks fought against it.
        The networks LOST money on news shows.

        • Because factual news is boring. Scandalous outrage, on the other hand, draws the viewers like nothing else.

  38. Wait I thought this site wasn’t going Political? Seems most media have gotten stuff wrong and it’s best not to talk politics or religeon in order to keep the peace

    • If you can find an equally hilarious blooper by CNN, I’ll be happy to put it up. 🙂 Nobody is above being made fun of and the more funny, the better. Funny is in short supply right now.

    • How is this political? Its talking about a company. A news company, that made a funny mistake. Last time I checked, companies are not political parties? I find your comments bizarre.

    • Most media have,but when it is fact checked and it turns out to be wrong,they retract it.Fox News rarely if ever does,instead they claim the right to alternate facts.

  39. If Monty Python is going to be mined for suitable quotes I vote for ‘he’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!’

    Or maybe 2020 could end with a large foot squishing everything…just a thought, the year is feeling increasingly like a surreal story and Monty Python are the masters of weird.

  40. Proving once again that Fox News is 10% news on a good day and 90% bull. One their worst day (aka most days), they are 100% bull.

  41. Sad. So sad. I love this author but many of us have a variety of political views. Can’t we keep them to ourselves so we can continue to enjoy the authors works without it being tainted by contrary politics.

    • Honestly, this isn’t politics. This is muppetry being called out for muppetry. It’s hysterical, or it would be if they didn’t have such a large reach.
      People believe the news. People deserve better

    • If you can’t take a joke, our fiction is probably not for you. We make fun of everything.

      • Well said Ilona. With so much problems and misery around us we need to be able to laugh ! If some one can not take it then too bad!

        • OMG that was my favorite scene,too,the ultimate in Kate snark humor! That and orro the chef in the inkeeper series….

        • When I had the privilege of attending KissCon in Seattle, many years ago now (lol), I asked if Ilona & Gordon would sign the page with “Here kitty kitty..”. Definitely one of my favs…I was drinking iced tea when I read it the first time and spewed tea everywhere. I had to purchase another copy of the book because it didn’t fair well.

    • Maybe because I’m not from America, but what has a news company making a hilarious mistake like this got to do with politics? Is your news not independent from political affiliation?

      For what it’s worth I would love it if the BBC did something so funny, or ITV or Sky News, or AlJazeera, all of which I watch regularly (not often I actually see Channel 4 news live, even though Krishnan Guru-Murthy is fantastic).
      The most we ever get is when Piers Morgan, not technically even the news, goes ballistic on an interviewee every morning, or when poor Naga Munchetty got reprimanded because she let her opinion of your president loose on a morning show. These aren’t actual news reports but breakfast shows – Piers can be interesting to watch at times!
      The news itself tends to be quite boring in how it’s read out on English TV, so if something as exciting as a Monty Python misquote got through the editing I’d be milking that for ages.

      Also I recommend anybody everywhere never to rely on a single source for news. Regardless of the requirement for objectivity, it is almost impossible to achieve by definition of humanity. You wouldn’t write an essay based on one piece of evidence so why live your life on one news source?

      • Actually the BBC has been known to do some pretty hilarious stuff, some intentional, some non-intentional.

        The one that I always remember best (and this dates me) is a kid’s show called “Blue Peter” where they made the mistake of trying to have a baby elephant in the studio – live. See if you can find it on youtube – I guarantee you’ll be crying with laughter.

        The other one I remember (which was intentional) is that there was a very serious documentary program called “Panorama” and on April Fool’s Day they did a very serious documentary of the “spaghetti harvest” in Italy, where they’d draped cooked spaghetti all over these trees, and then filmed the people pulling it off the branches.

        • Thank you thank you thank you. I just watched the Blue Peter episode and cried laughing! I remember the spaghetti harvest.

      • That is part of the problem with Fox News,significant majority of their viewers get their news only from Fox News,they don’t look at multiple sources, in large part bc Fox tells them what they want to hear.

    • It is telling that making fun of a stupid news piece is political. I think it is pretty telling of how much things have gotten twisted that making fun of a particularly stupid piece of reporting is political or offending someone’s political beliefs. If someone political beliefs are tied that deeply to a news source says that news source is no longer news.

  42. They say that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
    Apparently the same thing is true of classic comedy skits.
    I wonder when ESPN will start announcing an MLB starting line-up with “Who’s on First.”

    • I laughed when I saw the clip. Of course I’m Canadian and dont watch Fox News. As for the man in the street one of our national comedians made bizarre statements about Canada to our American neighbours and they agreed. We dont live in igloos, nor do we send our elders out in the snow to die! On the other hand, all Canada/US border crossings are closed except to essential traffic.

    • I don’t watch CNN, but again, if you see them do something as hilarious as this, let me know. We can always use more funny. 🙂

  45. Although I’m not a huge Fox News fan, I am a conservative which is the bulk of their fan base. I can certainly understand being critical of the show and even the channel for the stupidity of not fact-checking that “story”. However, many of your comments went further and disparaged viewers of the channel and even lumped all conservatives together in a very unkind light. And you did this on an author’s page where so many different people with different feelings, ideas, income levels, political views, backgrounds etc would read them. You didn’t care who you flung those words towards. You don’t care that we all share a love of the Andrews’ writing and therefore have something in common. It never occurred to you that your words might be insulting and inappropriate on this venue. Or you didn’t care. You couldn’t keep it on topic and keep your comments directed at the news station. You had to make it personal.

    That’s the real shame.

    • If you’re that sensitive, you *really* shouldn’t be reading the comments. You’re taking things much too seriously 🙂 I was just happy to see Monty Python again – haven’t seen the Holy Grail for ages!

  47. Thank you, Ilona Andrews for the chuckle. I first saw Monty Python in college as I had a friend who liked — he became a priest eventually— so that took me back.

    Thanks for yesterday letting us know you made changes to Ryder. Since it pouring down rain here the pup and I will indulge.

  48. No one has any sense of humor anymore. I don’t know exactly when tolerance was lost – I remember when President Obama was first depicted and people were up in arms about that.

    It’s not like no other news channel has ever made a mistake and been made fun of or criticized.

    When it all gets on my nerves I just turn it off. After all it isn’t like the book 1984 where you had to keep big brother on.

  49. This was THE movie I watched with my girlfriends growing up. We had it MEMORIZED. For some reason, it just tickles me pink that they didn’t recognize it.

    It also makes me kind of sad. People in the media should… I don’t know… consume the media? Surround themselves with people who know various forms of media?

    Perhaps that’s expecting too much.

    They just need… a spanking! Yes, yes a spanking! *giggles*

  50. One of my favorite Monty Python skits. This mistake is BEYOND hysterical. I do wish they hadn’t skipped the “watery tarts” … it’s important. 😉 HAHAHA

  52. I suspected it right after “I didn’t vote for him” and had it confirmed as soon as he got to “autonomous collective”. If I needed any more proof that Fox commentators have no sense of humor, this would certainly clinch it for me 🙂 It seems obvious that nobody at Fox had ever seen Holy Grail.

    Now, can their reporters find out the airspeed velocity of an unlaiden swallow? THAT’S news!

  53. ???????????? I don’t know what’s funnier, Fox News blunder or the fact people were offended by you pointing it out.

  55. The next thing you know, they are going to declare The Knights Who Say Ni as a terrorist group.

    Or that waiter in the Meaning Of Life with that last tiny little thin wafer mint. And After Eights will become Weapons of Mass Destruction.

  58. I think the Non fact checking and shoddy reporting is in connection with all of them, not just Fox News! Just sayin……. ;-}

  59. I never found Monty Python amusing, personally, but if I could laugh without having it hurt me, I’d have cracked up over this. Seriously, who looks to social media posts for news reports? It boggles the mind.

  60. I think Paddy Chayefsky’s prescient film “Network” should be required course material for any school of journalism from the 100 courses all the way through post graduate work.

  61. ROTFLMAO. It’s been ages since I’ve seen that movie/clip….so funny and so fitting. 🙂

  62. Lmao … pitiful… Wanted to share a blunder on B&N that shows another author as part of the hidden legacy series, like anyone can compare to the Author Lords, but I can’t get the screenshot to upload on here

    • Donna, a couple of years ago I complained to BN about other authors appearing inappropriately. The response, it was the Publisher doing it. The Publisher felt if someone wanted something by one author, just maybe, they’ll order this other author’s stuff.

      Maybe that’s similar to FOX, with the publisher thinking the readers are stupid.

  65. Can’t take yourself seriously. In college watched double feature of The Last Temptation of Christ and The Life of Brian. Interesting juxtaposition back to back.

    Though always funny to watch movies with English majors (I was engineering major) – The Hunt for Red October gets a different spin from them…

    Thanks for the laugh. (News can’t complain – they really are supposed to fact check.)

  67. If I were a loyal watcher of Fox News, I’d blast them. They really must feel their viewers are dumb as stumps.

  70. This is hilarious!!! Thank you for sharing. Unfortunately I think number 3 from the level of their reporting.

  71. I do have a problem with calling the Lady of the Lake a tart, and OMG are you implying baby aliens are not real?????

  72. I vote for funny (whatever part of the political spectrum it falls under). If we take ourselves too seriously, we’re in deep trouble. It’s the only way we can get through this in one piece.

  73. This is why I stick to reading the WSJ. All the other big media sources lost their credibility long ago. As far as the reddit post gaffe, I bet it was the work someone fresh out of college. Monty Python is dated. Classic, but dated.

  74. I would never in a million years thought any of the Horde were watching Fox News, much less defending it!
    We watched MPatHG just last month and laughed ourselves silly. “Just a flesh wound!”

    • Not going to argue,I don’t like CNN either. Tv news started going down the toilet back in the late 60s when they put it under their entertainment division.We laughed at ‘Network’, but tv news has become that. It no longer was news,it became presenting material to boost ratings.

      NPR actually is pretty balanced news and they do try to present both sides when there is an argument, but they also present the facts. It is why conservative congressman and presidents are always trying to defund it even though many of their constituents like it ( and to report fairly,a number of relatively conservative politicians have voted to keep finding it when Mconnel and Trump were going to defund it). The problem with NPR is they don’t have advertisers and thus don’t care about ratings,so they deliver news and commentary without worrying if it will offend gun nuts or granola heads.

  75. Prof. Heather Cox Richardson, a political historian, writes a daily synopsis of the news from the point of view of what she feels will be relevant in one hundred years.

    She wrote the following about regarding American media which I think is very relevant to Ilona’s post as reporting now feels like long commercials pushing us to buy their brand of ideology.

    I feel it’s a terrible shame that journalism has fallen to such a low. Videos and photos passed around social media help shed some light on matters, but photo and video doctoring technology is improving so rapidly, it’s getting difficult to trust even that.

    “For more than a century, American media has tried to report facts impartially. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Federal Communications Commission enshrined this principle in the Fairness Doctrine, which established that public media must base its news in facts and must present both sides of an argument fairly, honestly, and equitably. Beginning in the 1950s, Republicans who were ideologically opposed to the New Deal state complained that this principle, embraced by the “liberal media,” discriminated against them. In 1987, after President Ronald Reagan had placed new members on the board of the FCC, it abandoned the Fairness Doctrine.

    With that abandonment, talk radio took off, presenting an ideological narrative that showed white taxpayers under siege by godless women and people of color. The Fox News Channel was not far behind, calling itself “fair and balanced” until 2017, when it dropped the slogan, because it presented the ideological narrative that mainstream media rejected. Other media outlets tried to defend themselves against charges that they were biased against that narrative, so they opened up their pages and television shows to that ideological story. Increasingly, the extreme Republican narrative spread into the mainstream on the grounds that the media must show “both sides.”“

    To read her whole post, here is the link:

    https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-8-2020

    • You are not the only one that wishes that the fairness doctrine was back. Though it died whenever news had to defend its ratings and become entertainment. Though right now presenting both sides and expecting the sides to move to the middle is interesting. The Middle isn’t in the same place anymore because the gap has grown wider in part from the Koch brothers attacking and eliminating moderates in the primary.

  76. Funny???
    Funny????
    Not seeing much of that anywhere….
    Too many losing too much….

  79. Eh, national media, regardless of their headquarters’ political stance, seems to think viewers are less intelligent than the talking heads who read the output. Too bad Edward R.Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley legacy of reporting isn’t in vogue.

    • Try NPR or the BBC world news, they are both first class,there is reporting out there. The Wall St Journal reporting is good,though their op ed pages are another country.

  81. I never get my news from Fox “News” for the same reason that I don’t drink water from the toilet!

  84. John Cleese later tweeted: “BREAKING: After much in-house fighting amongst members of #CHAZ they have unanimously elected a strong and capable new leader. Please report @FoxNews And it should be noted he’s quite capable of walking down ramps and drinking water properly.”

    To see John Cleese in full regalia: https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/1272689298689495041

  85. Please don’t let your blog and web site turn into a political free-for-all. There is so much hatred in the country right now – left vs right, black vs white, money vs less money. Reading has always been a relaxation for me and it is painful to have it intrude everywhere. The kids aren’t even going be able to watch Chase in Paw Patrol.

  86. So very funny! This is my favorite scene from the movie (and yes, I am one of the people who have it memorized). Have you ever noticed how everyone thinks that they are descended from nobility? I used to point to this scene and point out that the mouthy peasants with political pretensions were my ancestors. And proud of it!

    No wonder I loathe Fox News.

  87. That. Was. Hysterical.

    I agree that pointing out the humor of the situation isn’t political. It’s humor. Frankly, the “side by side” comparison videos are so funny that my arms are weak from laughing and I have to use two hands to drink my coffee without spilling.

    It’s interesting that some readers seem to believe that Fox news is a political entity rather than a “news” organization and have voiced their objections based on the idea that fact checking is a political commentary. Facts are facts. Politics are politics. The two rarely intersect and when they diverge this widely, we have epic humor.

    As long as Fox uses the word “News” in their name, then they are obliging themselves to a higher standard of fact checking than gossiping neighbors and they are leaving themselves open to a great deal of good-natured ribbing when they are found wanting in accuracy.

    No matter what else, I’m glad that we have Monty Python’s comic jesting to buoy us during this horrific pandemic and our growing pains as a society. I’m also grateful to have wonderful fiction to turn to for respite thanks to the Ilona Andrews writing team.

  89. Sigh… my great-aunt used to argue with my mother all the time about politics… “I saw it on Fox News”. My mother said “Well, Mary Beth said you’re wrong. Call her and argue with her!”
    So my great-aunt called me and I said “Well, the BBC, NY Times and Chicago Tribune all agree that these are the facts.”
    She said “I only watch Fox News!”
    I said “If you only get your information from Fox News, than you deserve what you get.”

    She didn’t talk to me for 2 years. She told my mother I told her she was stupid.

  92. Christmas before last, the family is sitting around the table playing “Who’s most likely to”, where a person reads a scenario on the card and everyone votes for who is most likely to do that scenario. Someone drew a question that was something like “Who’s most likely to watch ‘reality’ television” or something like that. I pointed to one of my brothers and said that he watches Fox News. Everyone laughed and then voted him as the recipient of the card.

    I worked behind the scenes (e.g., camera person) at several local television stations for 8-10 years after college. Now this was before 24-hour television and way before Fox News, MSNBC, maybe even before CNN. At the local level, most journalists tried really hard to get their facts straight, but there were always one or two people at each station who wanted to put together the best “reel tape” so they could advance up to a higher television market. The problem is that news — no matter the medium or size of the market — has to be a revenue-generating business or that business can’t keep reporting the news. And when money is involved, you get non-journalists trying to direct the news to generate more viewers and therefore more dollars. It’s a sad state of affairs, but I don’t know what can be done to put the integrity of the truth in journalist above the need to attract viewers.

  93. I thought it was extremely funny, and I give major props to the person on Reddit for getting that speech down almost perfectly (wasn’t it watery bint throwing the sword?). I was lucky enough to see Spamalot on Broadway, and I pulled my rib muscles laughing.

  94. Okay it was funny. Something is wrong when we cannot laugh. Everyone makes mistakes. One time I sat in a meringue pie. Embarrassing but hilarious. Who leaves a pie on a bench? My aunt and she laughed the hardest.

  95. Thanks for posting this. I haven’t laughed so hard in weeks! Help, I’m being repressed!

  96. They also mashed a bunch of pictures together and posted them as “real, live, Seattle” pics. Total bullshit. I hope Getty Images charged the hell out of them. And how do I know they were bullshit? I live in Seattle. They also semi/demi excused their posting of these pics as fact, and then took them down completely as they were excoriated harshly. But hey, things live forever on the internet and I doubt that the true believers and easily led, will ever admit that Fox could maybe have posted them to encourage fear and loathing. Not to mention their ratings.

  97. Now,what would be really funny is if Fox News did a live report from that location and someone ran by yelling “Run away! Run away!” Or if they did an interview with a protester who asked them the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow.

  99. I like to think that someone at Fox intentionally wanted to make one of its talking heads into a laughingstock, again.

  100. So funny! Makes me want to start looking at Reddit for other gems! Thanks Gordon and Ilona!

  101. Well done on posting that snippet about Fox News. You guys are totally on point. Don’t call yourself a news organisation if you don’t check your facts before publishing. Google, anyone? (Actually, for me, FOX is just a propaganda tool for hard right zealots, not a news station. I am ashamed Murdoch is Australian-born. But that’s just my opinion.)
    I should add I grew up with Monty Python in Australia. I miss their subversive humour.

  103. Who knew Monty Python could predict the future? Now I’m very nervous. If anyone tries to fish ???? slap me, I’m out. ????

  104. You need to start you next post with the heading……
    ANND now for something completely different….

    Love you guys

  106. This solves a domestic mystery, thanks.
    Last week hubs told me that he heard that there were armed people taking over this section of Seattle, that they had run out the police and were holding it hostage – a direct quote. I went looking because I hadn’t heard anything about it. AP News wrote about a peaceful protest and the cops leaving voluntarily and even coming back to check on the station – all peaceful.
    It’s not the first time I had to fact check his Fox “news”.

  107. I live in Seattle. I am disturbed by the weird, inflammatory, & utterly false things that are being reported in the rest of the country about us. Police pushed rioters into poorer neighbor hood away from luxury apartments and buisnesses. Without preamble, they had 15 min warning. The neighborhood got mad. They kicked out the violence. After some idiot tried to drive over protesters, barriers were put up. They kicked out all antagonists; the looter, the rioters (left & right), and the police. Protesters (the nice people) were allowed to stay, and have a voice. Chop is what its actually called. Capital Hill Ongoing Protest. Nobody is locked in, nobody is out of supplies. They did start some communal gardens. They are forcing some great discussion. They are having street festival like block party. Newly reopened eateries have had uptick in walk up business. Everybody hope for permanent policy changes for greater Seattle area.
    I am super happy somebody is laughing at Foxnews. They have had to remove faked pictures, & gave Seattle a statement that they are an entertainment company first, who happens to do some news.
    (insert facepalm)

  108. I wish stuff like this was unique, but it isn’t. I don’t trust any single source of news be it Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and even some local news outlets. Sadly I have found to get close to the truth one has to look at several news outlets and the truth tends to be somewhere in the middle. It would be refreshing if “journalists” actually reported the events without embellishment or bias.

    News today has become about getting people’s attention and “clicks”, instead of informing people of the facts, and properly sourcing/researching a story.

  111. Hey I almost forgot. For all you NPRers out there, isn’t NPR going to be undergoing management changes bringing NPR more in line with our infamous POTUS’s definition of real news?

  112. And this isn’t the first time. It’s dangerous. Their viewers aren’t going to remember their corrections — if they issue any at all.

    How the hell do we demand accountability? I thought that was the job of the FCC?

    It’s so easy to pose this is as an us vs them issue, that they can just switch to another channel, but people have been taught to trust the news and might not even realize they’re being indoctrinated until they start repeating the same racist bs as their favorite talking head. I mean, fuck all racists obviously, but fox needs to be fined/held accountable for the hate carlson/ingraham etc are spewing.

  113. Fox News is an entertainment source, not a reputable source of news. The people at Fox are well aware of this. They purposefully chose that designation so they don’t have to defend the “news” they report. It’s a shame their audience takes them more seriously than they themselves do.

  114. HAHAHAHAHAHA
    I’m limiting myself to reading the BBC America app 1x a day for news. It gives me time to do things like read this blog.

  117. I’ve not seen ‘Holy Grail’ (either?). My first thought about ‘watery tarts’ was, “They should add more cornstarch…”
    But then, I can’t even find the ‘submit’ button on the comments page of your website, so…

  119. Died laughing! I really needed that! ???? Clearly there’s a gaping hole in their fact checker’s education.

  120. The thing is…a blooper, of this extreme funniness…points out the Emperor has no clothes.

    One of the concepts that I have always liked is that of the sacred clown.

  121. I realize everyone is entitled to free speech and opinion expressed – I just wish that this page had stayed with books and updates and fun family stuff. I am so overloaded with “newsy” stuff I looked forward to this interesting, safe, quiet place to come for a few minutes every day.

    • Penny, you don’t have to read every post. We have very descriptive titles and blog page gives you a summary. If you see a post that’s not your cup of tea, skip it.

  122. Was there ever a greater oxymoron than the two words “Fox” and “news” used together? Substitute “propaganda” for “news” and recognize that everything is grist for their mill.

  125. Hi. I’ve loved all of your books and appreciate you pointing this out. I am conservative/independent but feel no news organizations get a free pass on doing their due diligence on checking out facts. I do think it is important on understanding what shows you choose to watch and to make sure you get stories from a variety of sources in these current politically charged times. Some shows on multiple networks are opinion shows and some are supposed to be news. Please make sure you judge shows on content and their purported purpose. I really hope we can all come together as a nation soon. Thank you for giving us stories to distract from the chaos.

  126. Sadly too funny! Sadly Fox News viewers are mindless! Sadly facts makes no difference to their viewers!

  127. I think they just saw the “anarcho” bit and nothing else mattered, not even the sword bit; “anarcho” just basically translated directly over to “the crazed liberal hellscape of Seattle,” never mind the context or provenance of the passage.

  128. Excellent! The ppl at Fox probably think Monty Python and John Cleese are right next to the Devil …. These people would be trolled by the Onion, the way some North Korean news people were …. but at least they can claim second language interference …lol

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