The Hazards of Live TV: #25,153

A story by Scott Wooledge on Daily Kos talks about MSNBC picking up and running a satire Wooledge wrote as actual news. Oh boy…

Monday, Huffington Post was kind enough to publish a parody post I authored on their comedy blog, “Microsoft, Apple Unite to Demand That the National Organization for Marriage Boycott Them.” It was kind of hit, and may have even inspired a copycat.

But the premise was absurd. And the “public relations” people I “quoted” didn’t exactly speak like PR flacks.

(snip)

I also included this disclaimer at the end:

NOTE: This piece is satirical. All quotations are fabrications for the purpose of satire.

Apparently this and the fact it was published on Huffington Post’s Comedy vertical escaped the eagle-eyed journalists at MSNBC, who reported the story as news this morning. (Do they know about The Onion, you think? Should we tell them?)

Update: Mediaite’s Tommy Christropher writes that Thomas Roberts apologized on the air for this…

In his brief apology today, Roberts noted the disclaimer, and added, “We take issues of equality seriously, not as satire. It was my error.”

ICN Reaction: POV has its limits. Three times in eight days NOM and NOM related issues has caused Roberts to go too far and make MSNBC look bad in the process. This is a real problem.

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