Here's a story that was posted today in a weblog staffed by reporters for The Dallas Morning-News. The direct link to the story is here but since their site has a lot of link glitches, I'm going to post it in full. It's by a writer named Jim Frisinger…
Fox News loves lawyers all right. Cartoonist and The Simpsons godfather Matt Groenig tells this story on Terry Gross' Fresh Air today (and repeated tonignt on KERA at 7 p.m.) Seems The Simpsons did a Fox News parody, including use of the news crawl on the cartoon segment. Fox News threatened to sue. (Sounds like Al Franken all over again.) The Simpsons stood firm. Fox News backed down. Mr. Groenig figured Fox mobul Rupert Murdoch saw no percentage in the suit: Fox News suing a program appearing on the Fox Network. Hmmm. But if I heard the interview correctly, you won't see any new episodes with the Fox News crawl under Homer and Bart's antics: as a policy matter the network asked the cartoon to drop the concept because viewers might be confused that they're watching real news. I did not make this up.
And I don't think Matt did, either. I think Fox was just worried that viewers would realize that Homer Simpson had more credibility than Brit Hume. And seemed more lifelike.
(P.S. Yes, I know it's Matt Groening, not Groenig. But the reporter didn't.)