Comments on: Comments on 19397

Post number 19397

chuq — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:41:44 -0800

Survive This! Last week the Los Angeles New Times reported that NBC had signed teenage kidnap/rape victims Tamara Brooks and Jackie Marris to star in a midseason replacement "reality show", to be entitled "Survive This!"

After the initial jaw-drops of this revelation and alleged quotes from therapists and sex crime experts that "NBC may actually be doing the teens a service by exposing them to worldwide publicity", further along in the article we get this description of what the show will entail:

'Survive This!' contestants will be briefed by the girls before they are helicoptered to a remote, secret location. If things go according to plan, NBC will have placed several paroled repeat sex offenders in various locations miles from the drop zone. The contestants will have 48 hours to find safety at a remote building made to resemble a rural sheriff's station.

People were outraged. Protests were planned. There was just one catch. The author of the article made up the whole thing.

One wonders how this ever got past the editors.

By: chuq

chuq — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:46:23 -0800

Now, I don't want to sound like one of those people who trumpeted that they knew the plot twist of "The Crying Game" from very beginning of the movie ... but I didn't believe this article for a second. As bad as TV has gotten of late, this was too unbelievable to be true. (Plus, if it were true, it'd be Fox, not NBC.) I almost checked the calendar to make sure it was August and not April 1st. I'm usually a pretty big fan of the New Times -- their investigative articles, particularly on Roger Mahony and his role in the current Catholic Church unpleasantness, are generally excellent. But boy, have they got some egg on their faces today. I can't believe the editor didn't call the network for confirmation before running this.

By: Witty

Witty — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:52:06 -0800

I can't believe the editor didn't call the network for confirmation before running this. I'm not. That's how much they care... or not.

By: cell divide

cell divide — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:54:05 -0800

Chuq, I think you're falling for phase II of the hoax. The first article, and this article are both jokes. Now they're making fun of journalists who file false stories. At least that's my impression.

By: Witty

Witty — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:54:08 -0800

I mean... yea, um.

By: stifford

stifford — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:54:55 -0800

Actually, I thought the show sounded a little tame for FOX.

By: rcade

rcade — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:55:20 -0800

Both of the stories are fake, chuq. The writer of the second piece is having way too much fun with this story for it to be real.

By: arielmeadow

arielmeadow — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:55:21 -0800

Yet again, a piece that could have been a tasteless (but perhaps amusing) bit of satire is ruined by trying to pretend to be non-fiction. That editor is probably going through Dante's 8th level of journalistic hell right now.

By: chuq

chuq — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 16:07:31 -0800

Both of the stories are fake, chuq. The writer of the second piece is having way too much fun with this story for it to be real. I don't think so. Tony Ortega, the author of the second piece, has a long history with the New Times, with the paper's online archive showing his byline on 82 stories on serious topics, dating back to 1999. Antoine Oman, on the other hand, has no other stories in the paper's archives other than the one on the nonexistent TV show. It's a good paper, not known for deliberately perpetrating hoaxes. I think they just got massively hornswoggled.

By: timeistight

timeistight — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 16:33:52 -0800

Antoine Oman, on the other hand, has no other stories in the paper's archives other than the one on the nonexistent TV show. Maybe because he doesn't exist?

By: Hildago

Hildago — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 16:48:52 -0800

I wish reality would just reach its inevitable apogee and then fade away.

By: Hildago

Hildago — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 16:49:15 -0800

... reality tv, of course.

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 17:06:38 -0800

One wonders how this ever got past the editors. No. One wonders how stupid the people are who actually believed this silly story for more than one second.

By: monosyllabic

monosyllabic — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 17:15:13 -0800

Both of the stories are fake, chuq. The writer of the second piece is having way too much fun with this story for it to be real. Hmmm, I was wondering how a newspaper would go about firing a freelance writer...

By: transona5

transona5 — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 17:18:35 -0800

Tony Ortega, according to the Media News discussion on this, almost certainly wrote the first piece under a pseudonym. What a ham-handed, numbingly obvious bit of "satire" this was.

By: chuq

chuq — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 17:29:02 -0800

Tony Ortega, according to the Media News discussion on this, almost certainly wrote the first piece under a pseudonym. Well, if that turns out to be true, so much for his credibility, and that of the paper. Sheesh. What an entirely pointless exercise. If that was ever intended to be satire, it failed miserably.

By: rcade

rcade — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 18:40:21 -0800

The stories read like the fake news stories we produced at my college newspaper and circulated only in the newsroom -- self-indulgent in-jokes that weren't nearly as funny as we thought at the time. An editor who had run a fake piece and fired a real writer would not be joking about "statuary rape" and offending readers who aren't "quick on the uptake."

By: dhartung

dhartung — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 18:43:19 -0800

Antoine Oman also has no other Google hits. Short freelance career? Or tabula rasa?

By: slipperywhenwet

slipperywhenwet — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 19:08:56 -0800

Just a suggestion: I personally found that to be a rather long and slightly confusing post. Hey, my first comment bitching about someone else's post. Now I feel like a veteran!

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 20:07:25 -0800

What an entirely pointless exercise. If that was ever intended to be satire, it failed miserably. Oh? It appears to have fooled many people, including you, at least part way. The fact that this is beliveable says something about what both broadcasting and journalism have become.

By: alms

alms — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 21:55:36 -0800

I can vouch for the fact that this fooled at least some people. I work for an organization involved with Violence Against Women issues, and we received a contact about this last week. The woman refused to accept my assurances that it was a satire, because there was no external indication at all anywhere, and the rest of the paper had real news. It's not like it was an article on Landover Baptist Ministries.

And the fact that the article talked about dropping women into the woods with recently released sex-offending felons didn't seem unlikely enough to her to be impossible. hmmm...

By: chuq

chuq — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 23:22:38 -0800

Okay, apparently now Ortega's "maybe" copping to having written the first story. I may have been taken by the second one, but not the first ... he's no Jonathan Swift. The fact that this is beliveable says something about what both broadcasting and journalism have become. But it wasn't believable -- not the initial article, anyway. I'm guessing that they'll end up thinking it wasn't a good idea to run such a piece in a column where we normally read hard news. And no, I don't want to buy your damned bridge!

By: chazw

chazw — Fri, 23 Aug 2002 05:17:41 -0800

pmurray, I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, the characteristic that makes satire most effective, subtlety, is rarely utilized in modern satirical works (just look at the rave reviews the South Park movie received). Nothing new, really, look at the response to Orson Welles "War Of The Worlds" broadcast. A disclaimer at the end of the story might have been warranted. The clues are there, but who reads the news that closely, anyway? Personally, my mind has been made up by the time I read the headline. All those dissenting opinions out there just give me heartburn. chuq, Thanks for the link. What a hoot.

By: xowie

xowie — Fri, 23 Aug 2002 07:30:27 -0800

In comments to the weblog LA Examiner, Ken Layne writes: "The response was pretty funny -- response from angry readers, etc. And these idiots on Metafilter seems to have a lot of trouble understanding a simple prank".

By: cell divide

cell divide — Fri, 23 Aug 2002 09:45:54 -0800

Idiots on MetaFilter, eh? Out of all the people who posted here, only 1 or maybe 2 thought it was real...

By: haqspan

haqspan — Fri, 23 Aug 2002 11:14:55 -0800

You asked for it Ken, you got it. Anyway, Tony Ortega works hard and writes terrific journalism all the time. He deserves to have a little fun now and then I don't know whether he deserves to have a little fun. I think what his readership deserves is for him to put the fun back in funny.

By: chuq

chuq — Fri, 23 Aug 2002 11:26:30 -0800

Anyway, Tony Ortega works hard and writes terrific journalism all the time. Yeah, but if he wants to start writing satire, maybe he should read The Onion for a while and see how it's done. It should be funny, for starters.