Remember when NPR reported that Gabrielle Giffords died, and every person on teevee assumed his or her saddest voice and said, “We can now confirm that Congressman Gabrielle Giffords has died”? Yeah, her husband saw that too. And his children. Whoops.
On board a friend’s private plane rushing him and his family to his wife’s side, Kelly watched television reports erroneously declare that Giffords had lost her life in the shooting in a Safeway parking lot in Tucson, Ariz., on Saturday, Jan. 8.
“The kids … Claudia and Claire start crying. My mother, you know … I think she almost screamed. And I just, you know, walked into the bathroom, and you know, broke down,” Kelly, an astronaut, told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview. “To hear that she died is just, it’s devastating for me.”
Good work, everyone! Peabodys all around. CNN gets extra credit for stupidly putting up a photo of some kid they claimed was Jared Loughner but wasn’t him, and then continuing to put it up after they said they figured out it wasn’t him. And this was after they fired Rick Sanchez.
This is the ultimate prank, by the way: Enlisting America’s news organizations to tell your spouse and kids you’ve died. Just find someone to pass the information along to the media, and they’ll announce it, no questions asked. Those guys will fall for anything. [ABC News]
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He's an astronaut? How fucking cool is that???
You didn't know? His brother is one too, and was up in the International Space Station when all this happened.
All this shit happened while I was on vacation and out of the Matrix, so no, did not know this. Man, that's cooler than cop, fireman, and jet fighter pilot combined.
The brothers are twins. (forgive me if this is a report of the vaporized previous attempt)
We can put a man on the moon. Why can't we stop a bullet from shooting through a brain?
He's not only an astronaut, he is the one that taught Stephen Colbert how to land the shuttle.
So if the media says I died, can I collect the insurance?
Fox News Producer: "just run a ticker saying these are not the droids you are looking for"
(silence)
Fox News producer: "what – it worked in the movie"
There is no way that any Fox news producer is cool enough to toss off a reference like that.
NPR: sure they suck, but what else are you going to listen to while you drive around in your Cadillac Escalade, now that Howard Stern's gone — the Morning Zoo with Dave and the Weedwacker? El Rushbo?
Stephanie Miller.
Hoo doggies! I can't wait to see how my hubs reacts when I try this prank! Will he call his old girlfriend from high school ("my one true love," as he refers to her)? Will he finally banish our skate punk son from the house? Tell my mom what he REALLY thinks of her?
This is gonna be great!
Marsha?
I thought you weren't dead until you updated your Facebook status to say so.
What to do? It's like I always try another station whenever NPR starts with the @#*%ing fundraising but then I scare the kids when I start screaming at the radio.
I'm sorry I meant "fucking fundraising". I forget where I am sometimes.
It's part of the New Decency. No obfuscatory typography, goddamnit.
Hey, I approve. In fact, I f*^#ing totally approve.
I have less of a problem with the endless fundraising than I do with any report by Cokie Roberts or Mara Liasson. I wish those two would just move over to 'Fox & Friends' and be done with it.
I once had a seizure when I tuned into Scott Simon only to hear Susan Stamberg. Eeesh!
There's a face made for radio for ya.
Cokie Roberts does less work for her obscene commentator money than Juan "I get nervous" Williams.
If you lived in Connecticut you would get to know the sheer mind-numbing effect of tuning into NPR in the afternoons to hear a local show featuring Faith Middleton. She reads recipes on the air. She was doing this even before SNL had their "Delicious Dish" skit.
And Mrs. Tollefsen looked in the pantry, and all she had was cream of mushroom soup to make for the Lutheran Ladies Auxiliary. But she had never actually made cream of mushroom soup — it was only suppposed to be used for hot dish…..
'Dewey Beats Truman… to death with a baseball bat!'
well done
I don't see the negative here.
Family is sad, hears fake news, then we get the amazing TV/movie moment where they find out she's actually alive and it's the single happiest moment of their entire lives.
Thank you, NPR, for creating wonderful opportunities for love and cheer.
It's like those parents who tell kids that they don't get anything for Christmas or their birthday, and then when the kid's sobbing, reveal the puppy or the bicycle! What a wonderful surprise!
or a bicycle made of puppy parts!!! if that doesn't stop the waterworks, nothing will.
I shouldn't laugh. But I did.
I did too, don't feel bad.
It was fun until Föx got involved.
That's why they fired Juan Williams. Tyler Perry needed a new idea for his next movie.
Oh, I don't know. Maybe because this was an excellent example of a cynical media racing to break news for money? Call me crazy just that shit is just plain skeezy and bottom-feeding.
Jack, bubele. The colloquialism for "Oh no!" is not "whoops." A whoop is a shout of approval or excitement, if it rhymes with "poop." With the alternate pronunciation that rhymes with "shtup," it is a Southernism for "defeat" or "batter."
The word you want is "Woops," or alternatively "Oops."
Journalists must pay attention to language as well as facts.
Merriam-Webster says 'whoops' is a variant of 'oops'. 'Woops' is also a variant of 'oops'. So, whoop/whoops/oops-de-do.
& the Moops conquered Spain in the eighth century CE.
Merriam-Webster also says "literally" can mean "figuratively."
They list "flustrated," and within a year will probably list "refudiate," too.
I feel strongly that the Wonkette style-book should hold to a higher standard. Misspellings and improper punctuation have no place here.
That is a canard or possibly even blood libel. Well no, but it IS a canard.
Now you're just scaring me.
You go girl (or boy. whatev.) Taking on the Merriam-Webster. Taking it to THE MAN. Definitionally, speaking.
Here's a soda to go with your pedantry. Or a pop.
Whatever.
Pedantry? I'm just implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar. Their is nothing wrong with that.
ZB, you are in danger of spinning out of control, grammatically, though I shouldn't have ended a clause with an adverb, probably.
You mean 'there' instead of 'their'. Grammar and spelling errors occur with greater probability in posts about grammar and spelling. It's a Murphy or Finagle thing. I'm sure I've made one in this post, somewhere.
Why didn't I think of that? I could've avoided a nasty Haitian Divorce.
Shit happens.
It being fucking CNN I'm surprised we didn't have a fair a balanced debate; "Gabby Giffords, critical or DEAD?". We Report you Decide.
Or a poll.
Is Gabby Giffords dead?
1. Yes
2. No
3. How the fuck would I know?
Some say Gabby Giffords is in critical condition, while others say she is dead. Today on the Situation Room, we'll look at the issue and also discuss how this may be good news for John McCain.
Live from Wasilla, Sarah Palin. So Sarah, tell us, how does Gabby Giffords's death affect you?
Oh, and let's crawl the tweets on Gabby's status. Feh.
NPR and most other media are staffed by the same people who get off posting "First!" comments. Because, Journalism!
Good point. At some place along the timeline of journalism, the old saying "It's better to get it right than get it first" got switched around.
So your'e saying that the reports of her demise were greatly exaggerated?
Mine, too!
Thank God Piers Morgan is going to come in and shake up things.
A lot of folks didn't think CNN could find anybody worse than Larry King. Wrong again!
This time Ashton Kutcher went too far.
OT, and hate to rain on the parade today, but IntenseDebate is having some behavioral problems. Can we get it some counseling before it goes browsing for guns on a sporting goods Web site?
Hey, it's under 18 so we should be able to send it to its room until it gets its act together and changes its attitude.
Lets not forget the "shot in the head" bit. That must have been a lovely visual for the family.
Meh, no extra credit from me for CNN's wrong photo of the shooter. I'll save that for the wingnuts who are using the Facebook page of the shooter…you know, the one that says Obama was one of Loughner's heroes, only it turns out the FB page is obviously fake: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201101100010
The best part is who they do not care that they were deliberately being dishonest, but that they got caught on it. Typical of Little Andy and his cult.
"Jew dies and comes back to life" is not really big news.
Did that story already. No one's gonna believe it the second time around. Unless it includes Batboy.
Best post in a long time. I humbly salute you. I feel like Salieri.
[waving white flag]. Win.
In their race for the scoop,
the newsies all poop,
a diarrhea like stream,
of "facts" that just steam.
A poet I am not.
"And in appreciation for your generous gift to NPR, we'll send you a beautifully silk screened, 100% organic cotton body bag autographed by our very own Terry Gross."
Or Leann Hansen's disgusting cranberry sauce recipe
That's Susan Stamberg's mother-in-law's recipe. And it's gross too, also.
Uhm, that's not cranberry sauce…
Or Lorraine Hansberry's raisin-in-the-sun sauce recipe.
Okay, another win. Really. (Gosh, I'm promiscuously granting wins here. Pathetic.)
Gosh, don't apologize for such generosity! (Not on my account, at least . . .)
(Did I just say "Gosh" on Wonkette? I must be getting awfully sleepy.)
Maybe they meant she was "dead tired" from fucking bleeding out of the gaping hole abover her eye. Ya'll are too quick to judge.
I was on a forum when Pope John Paul II was about to take the big dirt nap and the mod announced his passing. I pointed out that the Vatican hadn't announced it yet. He went ALLCAPS on me and said that Fox news announced it. I pointed out that only the Valtican can determine when the Vicar of Christ is dead and not Bill O'.
Fox News, the Vatican – there's that much of a difference?
The dresses, the shoes, the hats … the Vatican is far more stylish in its reactionary nutjobbery.
…this brought to you by the same fukk ups from the 2001 elections!
I'm suprised that someone has yet to pull the old Monty Python "I'm not dead yet. I feel happy." Chesnut.
She's not dead; she's just resting?
Or I was also thinking "Show's how much you know. (She's) not completely dead…only 'mostly' dead. There's a difference"
Pining for the fjords.
While it's true that fast-breaking stories often come out with facts wrong, the really important thing here is that Nightline, with its huge staff and awesome resources, instead of taking time to dwell on the real issues, will spend an entire episode lovingly putting its fingers in the emotional scars of an instant celebrity. If these Hollywoodized news shows spent half as much effort on broadcasting actual facts as they do on extracting Oprah-in-tears moments so their serotonin-starved audiences can feel an emotion (if only vicariously), we'd be rolling in so many facts that Assisty and Beck would be out of a job.
"Facts"? If the news media started telling people facts about how well and truly screwed we all are, just as a for instance, the rage of the teabaggers would pale in comparison to the reaction of an informed citizenry to the" facts" of what's been done to them since the Presidency of His Senility Ronnie R.
I'm willing to risk it — it's like my response to the idea that everything is part of The LORD's Plan but he can't explain it to us because it's so complicated: try me. Anyway, I think the injection of actual news into our news viewing wouldn't shock everyone so much as have a defrosting affect that could take a while to be complete. But if we can get back to the place where torture is wrong and illegal that would be a good start.
I can only give you one p, but I super-sized it.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
I know a guy who played a practical joke where he told people his wife had died.
Yeah – he was a pack of fuckwits, too (single-handedly).
Well, I hope Giffords is happy, now that she's forced them to err.
I expect Rupert Murdoch will sue Giffords for forcing his minions to issue retractions.
can I get a big WHEW?
Also, best wishes to them all (the family) cuz they got a long road to hoe in therapy and recovery.
Rep. Giffords saw the news too, on her iPhone, and was glad to know there are iPhones in the afterlife.
"Harry, you got two choices here: you can die in a pool of your own blood here in the duck blind, or you can tell the story the way we tell it to you, and get some medical treatment. Whaddya say, pal?"
Not that Cheney would ever be that….heartless.
The other news agencies heard an NPR mashup of "Wait, wait, don't tell me," "All things Considered" and "shot point blank in the head" and did the math. Better to die and come back to life than to be alive and then die.
They dont' call it the "Gotcha!" media for nothing.
Yeah, yeah. Enough about him.
How has Sarah Palin been impacted by this latest example of the lamestream media's sloppy reporting???
I just sent a tip to Wonkette about this very subject. http://conservatives4palin.com/2011/01/a-clarific...
I'm hoping that Jack will sober up long enough to get this up so that we can tear it apart.
The "THEY'LL DO ANYTHING TO DESTROY HER" highlighted in red is a nice touch.
Assholes.
And as we know, Sarah Palin is the one who was really hurt by the ineptitude of the lame stream media, Also.
The hospital just told npr she was dead during a morphine nap because they were tired of hearing about her totally "real" husband "astronaut mike dexter."
Not to be cold or anything, but if they were watching Fox News (as shown in the picture) when they heard that she was dead, well, then, they kinda deserved it. Am I wrong? I mean…
Right wingers never believed the report that she died — they knew she was still alive because they hadn't seen the death certificate.
Deathers? Hilarious post, thanks!
And not just the death certificate, but the long form death certificate.
FOX, to make it more dramatic, put an R after Gabby's name.
That's why they were originally calling the shooter Jaded Loughned.
Neez moar "note-quotes": ♪♪…♪♪
I keep calling ESPN and telling them Brett Farve is retiring.
Can we get Aaron Rogers to retire too, before Sunday? Please?
Funnily enough, that is how Sarah Palin's husband and kids found out she was 'having' a baby (and not even a Down Syndrome Baby until his unveiling, in God's voice, in Sarah's penmenship) and running for Vice President.
iPhones is progress, people! when I was young, all we had was singing telegrams to inform us of tragic, albeit false, news:
♪♪Your lovely wiiiiife is dead♪♪
♪♪she was shot iiiiiiiin the head♪♪…
sung to the tune of "I could have danced all night"
is it just me or does anyone else think gabby is far far more attractive than sarah?
Let's see: Gabby's a dish and Sarah looks like a ghoul from beyond the crypt. So, no, I would say that it isn't just you (though maybe it's just you and me).
Jared Loughner D-Gunman
This gives me a sad, makes the snarky hard.
Not to excuse the dipshit that OK'd the death report, but head wounds bleed so fucking hard and fast you can be excused for thinking no one could possibly survive. Sloppy work from our Media, business as usual.
BTW, something about Bret Baier freaks me the fuck out. It's probably the beady little eyes, but there is something else.
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