How Not To Plagiarize: A Fox News Primer

Fox News apparently waited until the very last minute to start working on their final project for “Spinning the Sequester 101,” so they just copied some slides from a press release issued by the Republican Party:

 

 

On February 28, 2013, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) issued a list of wasteful federal spending projects alongside a corresponding list of important government programs that are being affected by this waste.  Days later, Fox News simply copied the Republican talking points and reported them on air as news. Now, yes, Fox did add a little pizazz to the slides, as you can see in the above comparison, but this is not what we mean when we tell kids to “synthesize and paraphrase what you learned.”

As Media Matters notes, this isn’t the first time Fox News has tried to copy answers off the Republican Party. They’ve done it once before. Actually, more than once before. Actually, at this point it seems to be a bit of a recurring problem .

But what makes this instance even more confounding than usual is that, in a brazen display, Tucker Carlson proceeds to bring NRCC chairman Greg Walden on Fox & Friends, displays Walden’s own NRCC slides as though Fox had created them, and then asks Walden why the Republicans haven’t come up with a list like this on their own. Watch:

Most perplexing of all is that Fox continues to copy off the Republican Party even though the Republican Party is also failing this class. In fact, it seems like every time we cover a subject newer than 1953, the two of them are caught passing notes about how the principal is a “Secret Muslim.” There’s also the matter of the troubling things we’ve been hearing from teachers in Geology, Climatologym and the Biological Sciences. For future reference, sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and repeatedly saying “la la la, I can’t hear you” is not what this school considers “Teaching the controversy.”

Look, obviously we don’t condone cheating, but if you are going to do it, why not at least copy off the Congressional Budget Office, or the Swiss?.

For example, look at this particular slide Fox News plagiarized from the NRCC’s website:

Now Rupert, it’s always hard when we have to tell a parent about their beloved child’s failings, but given this recent debacle plus their poor performance in general, Fox News may have to repeat the third grade. 

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