April 02 ,2010
For Global Warming Foes, Sometimes a Story is Just Too Good to be True.
The Lie: "Famed global warming activist James Schneider and a journalist friend were both found frozen to death on Saturday, about 90 miles from South Pole Station, by the pilot of a ski plane practicing emergency evacuation procedures."
What Really Happened: Ecoenquirer.com, an Onion-like satirical ecology website, posted the story as a parody—and the right ran with it.
The Liars: Foxnation.com, the site for Sean Hannity's show, and lucianne.com (run by Lucianne Goldberg, the conservative literary agent who won notoriety as Linda Tripp's ally during the Monica Lewinsky scandal)--and hundreds of other conservative websites. Foxnation.com took the story off its site by April Fool’s Day, but by then it had gone viral in the right wing blogosphere.
What Kind of Lie is It? Ideologically-driven wishful thinking by conservative bloggers who revel in the delicious irony. As one of Hannity's followers commented, this "shows just how STUPID, SCARY and yes, FUNNY Liberalism is."
Does James Schneider Really Exist?: There are plenty of James Schneiders, of course, but a Nexis search of his name prior to the publication of the satire shows no such person involved in global warming.
Where There Any Clues that the Story Wasn’t for Real? Sure. It was posted just before April Fool's Day. If that wasn't enough, there was also the site’s disclaimer: "All content on this site, being a mixture of parody, satire, and lame humor, is for entertainment purposes only. If any content is found to be offensive or objectionable in any way, please accept our apologies... but we also suggest that you get a life."
The story had several details that should have raised an eyebrow or two--eg, the pilot is said to be Jimmy Dolittle, presumably a reference to the fabled Air Force pilot Jimmy Doolittle.
Finally, the site is filled with similar satirical eco-stories for foes of tree huggers: “As Mr. Gore boarded Green-1, the high efficiency Boeing 797 hybrid jet (sporting a smaller version of the standard heated swimming pool).”
Any Other Problems with Foxnation’s Version? Not only did they blow it when it came veracity, there was also a little tiny problem of plagiarism. The first six paragraphs of Ecoenquirer’s story were reproduced verbatim by Foxnation—with no credits whatsoever.
Who Else Fell for It? Lots of people on the right gloated about Schneider's reported death. On Free Republic, one reader wrote, “They froze…God laughed. Oh, the irony is just too much,” wrote one.
How did Rush Limbaugh Handle It? Rush is no fool--at least this time. He began his April Fool’s Day broadcast with it, but soon told listeners, “This story about the global warming guy freezing to death in the Antarctic is a fraud, hoax story."
Rush being Rush, however, he was not content to leave it at that and he did manage to lie by by saying the story came "from FoxNation.com, Fox News Nation. It's not FoxNews.com; it's a parody site.”
Sorry, Rush, FoxNation is not a parody site—it is a site for fans of Fox News, which duly hailed FoxNation on its first anniversary.
