Parody Website Fools The Washington Post Into Thinking Sarah Palin Heading To Al Jazeera
Parody Website Fools WaPo Into Thinking Sarah Palin Heading To Al Jazeera
“The Sarah Palin Story is a cautionary tale about what can happen when politics and celebrity meet,” beginsWashington Post contributor Suzi Parker’s profile of Sarah Palin’s move from Fox News Channel to the future cable news network Al Jazeera English. “Late last week Al Jazeera America announced the former vice-presidential candidate would be joining their news network.”
The only problem with Parker’s scoop is that the news of Palin’s move comes from the comedy news site The Daily Currant, which recently published a wide-ranging “interview” with Palin about her lateral career move. The Daily Currant describes itself as “the global satirical newspaper of record.”
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“As you all know, I’m not a big fan of newspapers, journalists, news anchors and the liberal media in general,” Palin told the Web site The Daily Currant. “But I met with the folks at Al-Jazeera and they told me they reach millions of devoutly religious people who don’t watch CBS or CNN. That tells me they don’t have a liberal bias.”
“Ironically, Fox News recently called Al Jazeera “an anti-American terror mouthpiece,” Parker noted ironically.
“Bless her heart, is Palin trying her best to stay relevant while her 15 minutes fades into the political history books?” Parker asked, after noting that the former Alaska governor posted a message on her Facebook announcing her intention to attend the memorial service of slain Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.
Parker’s comprehensive editorial-cum-profile of Palin and her career cites multiple sources and includes several supporting quotes, but is unfortunately based on a faulty premise.
The Daily Currant fooled a number of culture watchers on the internet recent when they called out conservative commentator Ann Coulter for refusing to board a plane piloted by an African-American. The incident never occurred, but the opportunity to confirm the biases of those who disagree with Coulter was too good to pass up. That bit of “news” made it around the internet before it was widely debunked for having originated from a comedy news site.
UPDATE: Parker posted a correction:
An earlier version of this post incorrectly reported that Sarah Palin planned to contribute to the Al Jazeera America news network.
The original article was titled “Sarah Palin’s plan to reach ‘millions of devoutly religious people’ through al-Jazeera.” The amended now reads “Sarah Palin tries to stay relevant.”
UPDATE 2: Parker’s piece now features a longer correction:
An earlier version of this post incorrectly reported that Sarah Palin had signed on as a contributor to the Al Jazeera America news network. The blogger cited a report on the Daily Currant Web site as the basis for that information without realizing that the piece was satirical.
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