Wednesday 29 October 2003

Fox sues Fox over Simpsons

Fox News is threatening to sue Fox Entertainment over a fake news ticker that was used in an episode of The Simpsons.

"The alleged row centred on a parody of Fox News' rolling news ticker, which included headlines such as "Do Democrats cause cancer?"

Mr Groening said the news channel backed down because it would have caused Fox to bring a lawsuit against itself.

"Fox said they would sue the show and we called their bluff because we didn't think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. We got away with it," Mr Groening told National Public Radio in the US.

"But now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls [tickers] on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news," he added on NPR's Fresh Air programme."

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Wednesday 22 October 2003

Elliott Smith commits suicide

Elliott Smith has died aged 34.

It looks as though he took his own life by stabbing himself in the chest. 

He had battled depression and alcoholism for a long time and had made, as far as I'm aware, at least one attempt to kill himself previously.

The world has lost an incredibly talented, hypnotising song-writer.

Link