Reading in the Baltimore Sun about the firing of a WBAL-Baltimore NBC affiliate reporter John Sanders (no relation to me) for taking audio from Fox broadcast coverage of a missing monkey whose most distinuguishing feature is his "bright blue scrotum" and dubbing those words into Fox Anchor John Gibson's discussion of a speech by Attorney General Eric Holder. Strangely (or not maybe) , the Huffington Post posted the video as authentic.
News media may be hitting a new low in professionalism--but it reminds me of a "parody ad" published by Hustler Magazine targeting Reverend Jerry Falwell. The ad mocked a series of ads Campari was running during that period under the double entendre theme "X talks about his first time." On a page labeled "AD PARODY - NOT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY", Hustler publishes a fake interview with Falwell in which the Moral Majority chief discloses that his first time was in an outhouse with his mother. (Wikipedia displays a copy of the ad here.) Falwell sued Hustler for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Trial court awarded Falwell $150,000 in damages and Flint appealed on First Amendment grounds. Falwell argued that the piece was so outrageous as to remove First Amendment protection. The Supreme Court did not agree. Noting that outrage is subjective, the court reversed--holding that the trial court's decision to award damages to a satirized public figure for emotional distress unreasonably burdens non-obscene speech by political cartoonists and satirists. Speech considered vital to our society. The Court also found for Flint on the defamation claim because no one would believe that the "AD PARODY" was factual anyway.
In the Bright Blue Scrotum prank, Eric Holder is the obviously satirized public figure. But to add a twist to the Falwellian analysis, Fox Anchor John Gibson was also smeared by Sanders' prank and Huffington Post's (now retracted) publishing of the prank video as authentic. I'll let you know if my law school class thinks Gibson has a case against Huffington Post. Since the internet is considered to be self-correcting and the Huffington Post aplogized to Gibson, I know at least one IP lawyer who wouldn't take his case on contingency.
