June 07, 2008 12:00 PM
Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against Fox News For Reporting Bogus Story, Calls Doocy & Kilmeade "Gullible,"
By Logan Murphy
Video and more from Media Matters:
http://crooksandliars.com/2008/06/08/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-against-fox-news-for-reporting-bogus-story-calls-doocy-kilmeade-gullible
In a June 4 article headlined "Judge tosses school official's lawsuit against Fox News," the Associated Press reported on the dismissal of a school superintendent's lawsuit against the Fox News Channel and Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade for repeating as fact an online parody news report of a school prank that included fabricated quotes attributed to the superintendent. The judge called Doocy and Kilmeade "gullible," as the AP noted, and while he dismissed the lawsuit, the Fox & Friends segment in question
marked at least the third time since 2004 that Fox News has issued a retraction and apology for airing a fake news report that repeated false information.
In fact, the segment aired after Fox News' Vice President for News John Moody reportedly warned staff in January 2007 that "seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC." In dismissing the suit, U.S. District Court Judge D. Brock Hornby wrote:
The facts in this case -- a morning cable news show derisively reporting events and statements obtained unwittingly from an online parody -- should provide grist for journalism classes teaching research and professionalism standards in the Internet age. But First Amendment principles developed long before the Internet still provide protection to the gullible news program hosts against this public official's claims for defamation and false light invasion of privacy. Poetic justice would subject the defendants to the same ridicule that they accorded the plaintiff. But in real life, the aggrieved school superintendent must be satisfied with their later retraction and a professional reputation sullied less than theirs.
The lawsuit was filed by Leon Levesque, a school superintendent in Lewiston, Maine. According to the AP, "[t]he case was an outgrowth of an April 2007 prank in which a middle school student tossed a slab of leftover Easter ham onto a table surrounded by Somali Muslim youngsters, knowing the Muslims would be offended." Freelance writer Nicholas Plagman later published a fabricated news report about the incident at Associated Content in which he attributed numerous made-up quotes to Levesque, including one in which Levesque was alleged to have said: "These children have got to learn that ham is not a toy." On the April 24, 2007, edition of Fox & Friends, Doocy and Kilmeade reported on Plagman's story as though it were fact and repeated several of the made-up quotes attributed to Levesque. In discussing the parody report, Doocy repeatedly asserted: "We are not making this up." Indeed, when Kilmeade asserted: "You know, I hope we're not being duped," Doocy replied, "We're not being duped. I've looked it up on a couple of different websites up there." Doocy issued an on-air retraction and apology during the May 16, 2007, edition of Fox & Friends First.
Doocy repeated the fake quotes attributed to Levesque from the online article despite the fact that, according to the washingtonpost.com blog The Sleuth, Moody "issued this missive to staff in his daily editorial note on Jan. 23 [2007]: 'For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC.' " Moody wrote the note after Doocy retracted his false assertion on the January 19, 2007, Fox & Friends, that Sen. Barack Obama "spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father -- as a Muslim and was educated in a madrassa." Moody criticized the hosts of Fox & Friends in a January 29, 2007, New York Times article, saying, "The hosts violated one of our general rules, which is know what you are talking about. ... They reported information from a publication whose accuracy we didn't know."
Similarly, on October 1, 2004, Fox News issued a retraction and an apology for a fake news story written by chief political correspondent Carl Cameron that falsely attributed quotes to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in an attempt to ridicule him over a purported manicure.
In his opinion in the Levesque lawsuit, Hornby wrote that Fox News' "failure to confirm the accuracy of the quotations demonstrates 'an extreme departure from professional standards' ":
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