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15 June 2020
Fox News falls for Monty Python joke in report criticising Seattle protesters & Fox News runs digitally altered images in coverage of Seattle’s protests, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone 14&12JUN20
MORE proof (as if it is actually needed) FAUX fox news is not a real news organization, martha maccallum is just another one of their brainless fotze who swallows anything she believes will help her defend the fascist drumpf / trump administration. From the Independent and the Seattle Times.....
Fox News’ coverage of the Seattle protests has taken another hit after the news organisation quoted a Reddit Monty Python joke as real for its viewers.
Martha MacCallum, host of Fox News’ The Story, was covering Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) for her viewers, which included claims from the cable news channel that there were leadership problems within the organisation.
To illustrate this point, Fox News shared a screenshot of a Reddit post entitled “I didn’t vote for Raz”. Raz Simone, a rapper, is the alleged unofficial leader of CHAZ.
“I thought we had an anonymous collective,” Ms MacCallum said, reading the Reddit post. “An anarcho-syndicalist commune at the least, we should take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.”
What Fox News failed to realise was that this post was a joke that played off a popular scene from the 1975 comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
In the scene, King Arthur approaches two peasants who are mud-farming out on the land and announces himself as their king. But Dennis, one of the peasants, informs the dumbfounded king that he and his cohorts have established their own form of government – which results in a debate about who actually is in charge.
“We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of purely external affairs,” Dennis says, a nearly verbatim quote used in the Reddit post.
The Reddit user even went as far as to later include the quote where Dennis says the king can’t “simply expect to wield supreme executive power just because someone threw a sword at him”. This portion of the post was not read aloud by Ms MacCallum to viewers but it was shown in the screenshot aired.
Although Fox News did not recognise the joke, people on Twitter did and the moment quickly went viral.
But this type of misinformation from Fox News is notable, specifically because it is America’s most watched cable news channel. Spreading this misinformation could skew viewers’ perspectives about what is actually going on inside CHAZ.
Opinions have differed about the police-free occupation. People with the movement overtook multiple blocks of Seattle, including the area surrounding a now-abandoned police precinct, last week.
President Donald Trump and Fox News have called the people involved with CHAZ anarchists and claimed they're involved with Antifia, a far-left militant group. But the area has actually remained rather peaceful and morphed into a festival of sorts, with people camping, drinking, and playing music for others.
CHAZ formed as a police-free settlement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement following the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other black Americans at the hands of police.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has vowed to protect the settlement's First Amendment rights of speech, but the occupation has sparked conversations on if the area should be dispersed.
Fox News’ coverage, including the moment wrongly quoting a Monty Python joke as reality, has largely criticised the settlement.
The conservative site also had to remove doctored pictures on Friday that pushed misleading information about CHAZ after the Seattle Times reported that the photos used were inaccurate.
A spliced 10 June picture of an armed man at the Seattle protests was combined with two other pictures: One also from 10 June of a sign reading: “You Are Now Entering Free Cap Hill,” and another image captured on 30 May of a shattered storefront.
Coverage on Fox News' site then labelled Seattle as “CRAZY TOWN” in a headline while displaying a banner image of a city block on fire. The picture used actually came from protests in St Paul, Minnesota.
Fox News took down the pictures following the Seattle Times report and released an editor’s note addressing the mistakes.
“A FoxNews.com home page photo collage which originally accompanied this story included multiple scenes from Seattle’s “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” and of wreckage following recent riots. The collage did not clearly delineate between these images, and has since been replaced. In addition, a recent slideshow depicting scenes from Seattle mistakenly included a picture from St. Paul, Minnesota. Fox News regrets these errors,” the note read.
Fox News declined to comment about the Monty Python error when contacted by The Independent.
This digitally manipulated image was published on the Fox News homepage on June 12 with stories about Seattle. The image combines scenes from a June 10 photograph from Capitol Hill by David Ryder with two May 30 images from downtown by Karen Ducey.
Update:This story has been updated to include an apology Fox News posted on its website on Saturday.
Fox News published digitally altered and misleading photos on stories about Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in what photojournalism experts called a clear violation of ethical standards for news organizations.
As part of a package of stories Friday about the zone, where demonstrators have taken over several city blocks on Capitol Hill after Seattle police abandoned the East Precinct, Fox’s website for much of the day featured a photo of a man standing with a military-style rifle in front of what appeared to be a smashed retail storefront.
The image was actually a mashup of photos from different days, taken by different photographers — it was done by splicing a Getty Images photo of an armed man, who had been at the protest zone June 10, with other images from May 30 of smashed windows in downtown Seattle. Another altered image combined the gunman photo with yet another image, making it appear as though he was standing in front of a sign declaring “You are now entering Free Cap Hill.”
1 of 4| ORIGINAL IMAGE: This June 10 image shows a sign on a barrier at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). It was used in the creation of digitally manipulated images... (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images) More
Fox’s site had no disclaimers revealing the photos had been manipulated. The network removed the images after inquiries from The Seattle Times.
In addition, Fox’s site for a time on Friday ran a frightening image of a burning city, above a package of stories about Seattle’s protests, headlined “CRAZY TOWN.” The photo actually showed a scene from St. Paul, Minnesota, on May 30. That image also was later removed.
The Fox News homepage on June 11 displayed an image from May 30 protests in St. Paul, Minnesota, to illustrate a story about Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
In this Associated Press photo from May 30, a protester runs past burning cars and buildings on Chicago Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. (John Minchillo / The Associated Press)
In an emailed statement, a Fox News spokeswoman said: “We have replaced our photo illustration with the clearly delineated images of a gunman and a shattered storefront, both of which were taken this week in Seattle’s autonomous zone.”
That statement is inaccurate, as the gunman photo was taken June 10, while storefront images it was melded with were datelined May 30 by Getty Images.
On Saturday, Fox apologized in an editor’s note posted to stories about CHAZ on its website, saying its home-page photos “did not clearly delineate” the splicing together of multiple images from different locations. The editor’s note also acknowledged the erroneous use of the Minnesota rioting photo to illustrate Seattle news. “Fox News regrets these errors,” the note stated.
The network’s misleading and faked images were published as the Capitol Hill zone — quickly labeled CHAZ — became a political flashpoint for conservatives nationally and a target of tweets by President Donald Trump, who has branded the demonstrators “domestic terrorists” and threatened federal action unless local officials “take back” the area.
National news outlets on Friday also continued to cite a now-withdrawn comment by a Seattle police commander suggesting protesters were extorting payments from businesses within CHAZ. Seattle police Chief Carmen Best walked back that statement on Thursday, saying the comment was based on rumor and social media. “We haven’t had any formal reports of this occurring,” she said.
The daily scene at CHAZ has mostly been peaceful, with artists painting an enormous “Black Lives Matter” street mural and people gathering for free food, music and documentary films.
However, armed individuals have appeared in the zone, which was occupied by protesters after Seattle police retreated as a de-escalation move following several nights in which police fired tear gas and flash-bang devices. Police said that was in response to projectiles being thrown at officers. At a news conference this week, Best said she disagreed with the decision to leave the precinct, saying its abandonment has led to increased 911 response times.
ORIGINAL IMAGE: This June 10 image shows a sign on a barrier at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). It was used in the creation of digitally manipulated images published by Fox News. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)
MANIPULATED IMAGE: This digitally manipulated image was published on the Fox News homepage on June 12 with stories about Seattle. The image combines scenes from two different June 10 photographs from Capitol Hill.
The June 10 photo of an unidentified man with a gun standing in front of a car in CHAZ was taken by Seattle freelance photographer David Ryder, who distributed the photo through Getty Images.
The image, as displayed on the Fox News website, was spliced with other photos, including a photo of a smashed retail storefront in May, making it look as though the scene was all playing out concurrently in the autonomous zone. “It is definitely Photoshopped,” confirmed Ryder. “To use a photo out of context in a journalistic setting like that seems unethical.”
Photojournalism ethics experts agreed.
“I think it’s disgraceful propaganda and terribly misrepresentative of documentary journalism in times like this, when truth-telling and accountability is so important,” said Kenny Irby, a photojournalism ethics educator and consultant. “There is no attribution. There is no acknowledgment of the montage, and it’s terribly misleading.”
Akili Ramsess, executive director of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), said ethical standards clearly prohibit alteration of photos in news accounts.
“For a news photo that is supposed to be of the moment, it is completely egregious to manipulate this the way they have done,” Ramsess said.
While photo illustrations that meld images can be OK in certain contexts, such as for features or opinion pieces, they need to be properly labeled, she said, adding that misleading mashups have no place in straight news coverage. The NPPA ethics code expressly forbids use of altered photos in news stories.
Fox News has “a responsibility to their public. It’s one thing for their opinion hosts to state whatever opinion they have, but for their online news platform, they have to follow the ethical norms of any news organization,” she said.
Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com;on Twitter: @Jim_Brunner.Seattle Times political reporter Jim Brunner covers state, local and regional politics.
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