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Journalists V Bloggers: Rev. Al Sharpton’s Fighting Dolphins

by | 30th, August 2007

dolphinfightingcom.jpgTHE great thing about real journalists rather than bloggers, say, is that journalists check their sources. They’re not monkeys chained to a keyboard spewing out the first thing they come across on the web.

MSNBC, for example, scored quite a scoop the other day, when it reported that the Rev. Al Sharpton had dreamed up an imaginative defense for Atlanta Falcons quarterback and dog fighting fan Michael Vick.

Quoting from the Rev.’s blog, MSNBC reported Sharpton saying that a star white athlete never would have been prosecuted for the same crime:

“If the police caught Brett Favre (a white quarterback for the Green Bay Packers) running a dolphin-fighting ring out of his pool, where dolphins with spears attached to their foreheads fought each other, would they bust him? Of course not.”

Dolphins with spears attached to their foreheads fighting in a quarterback’s swimming pool?

The quote no longer exists on the MSNBC website for the obvious reason that the Rev. Al never wrote it. (Gawker generously published a screengrab after MSNBC pulled it down.)

The explanation for the whole cock-up is simple: Al Sharpton’s blog is a parody; one of dozens of celebrity parody blogs that are part of the News Groper network.

And it’s not as though the signs weren’t there for anyone to see. Apart from the sheer insanity of the Rev.’s post, his blogroll includes Britney Spears, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Kim Jong-Il.

MSNBC excused itself by labelling the blog a “hoax”. But as blogger Matthew Baldwin notes, a hoax is an act that is intended to trick or dupe someone. The Al Sharpton blog intends to do neither.

Meanwhile the Sharpton blogger fired back that the MSNBC reporter was a hoax, and then suggested he look into other “despicable animal torture practices” being perpetrated by white athletes, such as llama throwing-star fighting and ladybird flail brawling.



Posted: 30th, August 2007 | In: Reviews Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink