Survive This!

August 22, 2002 3:41 PM

Survive This! Last week the Los Angeles New Times reported that NBC had signed teenage kidnap/rape victims Tamara Brooks and Jackie Marris to star in a midseason replacement "reality show", to be entitled "Survive This!"

After the initial jaw-drops of this revelation and alleged quotes from therapists and sex crime experts that "NBC may actually be doing the teens a service by exposing them to worldwide publicity", further along in the article we get this description of what the show will entail:

'Survive This!' contestants will be briefed by the girls before they are helicoptered to a remote, secret location. If things go according to plan, NBC will have placed several paroled repeat sex offenders in various locations miles from the drop zone. The contestants will have 48 hours to find safety at a remote building made to resemble a rural sheriff's station.

People were outraged. Protests were planned. There was just one catch. The author of the article made up the whole thing.

One wonders how this ever got past the editors.
posted by chuq (26 comments total)

Now, I don't want to sound like one of those people who trumpeted that they knew the plot twist of "The Crying Game" from very beginning of the movie ... but I didn't believe this article for a second. As bad as TV has gotten of late, this was too unbelievable to be true. (Plus, if it were true, it'd be Fox, not NBC.) I almost checked the calendar to make sure it was August and not April 1st.

I'm usually a pretty big fan of the New Times -- their investigative articles, particularly on Roger Mahony and his role in the current Catholic Church unpleasantness, are generally excellent. But boy, have they got some egg on their faces today. I can't believe the editor didn't call the network for confirmation before running this.
posted by chuq at 3:46 PM on August 22, 2002

I can't believe the editor didn't call the network for confirmation before running this.

I'm not. That's how much they care... or not.
posted by Witty at 3:52 PM on August 22, 2002

Chuq, I think you're falling for phase II of the hoax. The first article, and this article are both jokes. Now they're making fun of journalists who file false stories. At least that's my impression.
posted by cell divide at 3:54 PM on August 22, 2002

I mean... yea, um.
posted by Witty at 3:54 PM on August 22, 2002

Actually, I thought the show sounded a little tame for FOX.
posted by stifford at 3:54 PM on August 22, 2002

Both of the stories are fake, chuq. The writer of the second piece is having way too much fun with this story for it to be real.
posted by rcade at 3:55 PM on August 22, 2002

Yet again, a piece that could have been a tasteless (but perhaps amusing) bit of satire is ruined by trying to pretend to be non-fiction.

That editor is probably going through Dante's 8th level of journalistic hell right now.
posted by arielmeadow at 3:55 PM on August 22, 2002

Both of the stories are fake, chuq. The writer of the second piece is having way too much fun with this story for it to be real.

I don't think so. Tony Ortega, the author of the second piece, has a long history with the New Times, with the paper's online archive showing his byline on 82 stories on serious topics, dating back to 1999.

Antoine Oman, on the other hand, has no other stories in the paper's archives other than the one on the nonexistent TV show.

It's a good paper, not known for deliberately perpetrating hoaxes. I think they just got massively hornswoggled.
posted by chuq at 4:07 PM on August 22, 2002

Antoine Oman, on the other hand, has no other stories in the paper's archives other than the one on the nonexistent TV show.

Maybe because he doesn't exist?
posted by timeistight at 4:33 PM on August 22, 2002

I wish reality would just reach its inevitable apogee and then fade away.
posted by Hildago at 4:48 PM on August 22, 2002

... reality tv, of course.
posted by Hildago at 4:49 PM on August 22, 2002

One wonders how this ever got past the editors.

No. One wonders how stupid the people are who actually believed this silly story for more than one second.
posted by wackybrit at 5:06 PM on August 22, 2002

Both of the stories are fake, chuq. The writer of the second piece is having way too much fun with this story for it to be real.

Hmmm, I was wondering how a newspaper would go about firing a freelance writer...
posted by monosyllabic at 5:15 PM on August 22, 2002

Tony Ortega, according to the Media News discussion on this, almost certainly wrote the first piece under a pseudonym.

What a ham-handed, numbingly obvious bit of "satire" this was.
posted by transona5 at 5:18 PM on August 22, 2002

Tony Ortega, according to the Media News discussion on this, almost certainly wrote the first piece under a pseudonym.

Well, if that turns out to be true, so much for his credibility, and that of the paper. Sheesh. What an entirely pointless exercise. If that was ever intended to be satire, it failed miserably.
posted by chuq at 5:29 PM on August 22, 2002

The stories read like the fake news stories we produced at my college newspaper and circulated only in the newsroom -- self-indulgent in-jokes that weren't nearly as funny as we thought at the time. An editor who had run a fake piece and fired a real writer would not be joking about "statuary rape" and offending readers who aren't "quick on the uptake."
posted by rcade at 6:40 PM on August 22, 2002

Antoine Oman also has no other Google hits. Short freelance career? Or tabula rasa?
posted by dhartung at 6:43 PM on August 22, 2002

Just a suggestion: I personally found that to be a rather long and slightly confusing post. Hey, my first comment bitching about someone else's post. Now I feel like a veteran!
posted by slipperywhenwet at 7:08 PM on August 22, 2002

What an entirely pointless exercise. If that was ever intended to be satire, it failed miserably.

Oh? It appears to have fooled many people, including you, at least part way. The fact that this is beliveable says something about what both broadcasting and journalism have become.
posted by pmurray63 at 8:07 PM on August 22, 2002

I can vouch for the fact that this fooled at least some people. I work for an organization involved with Violence Against Women issues, and we received a contact about this last week. The woman refused to accept my assurances that it was a satire, because there was no external indication at all anywhere, and the rest of the paper had real news. It's not like it was an article on Landover Baptist Ministries.

And the fact that the article talked about dropping women into the woods with recently released sex-offending felons didn't seem unlikely enough to her to be impossible. hmmm...
posted by alms at 9:55 PM on August 22, 2002

Okay, apparently now Ortega's "maybe" copping to having written the first story. I may have been taken by the second one, but not the first ... he's no Jonathan Swift.

The fact that this is beliveable says something about what both broadcasting and journalism have become.

But it wasn't believable -- not the initial article, anyway. I'm guessing that they'll end up thinking it wasn't a good idea to run such a piece in a column where we normally read hard news.

And no, I don't want to buy your damned bridge!
posted by chuq at 11:22 PM on August 22, 2002

pmurray, I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, the characteristic that makes satire most effective, subtlety, is rarely utilized in modern satirical works (just look at the rave reviews the South Park movie received). Nothing new, really, look at the response to Orson Welles "War Of The Worlds" broadcast.

A disclaimer at the end of the story might have been warranted. The clues are there, but who reads the news that closely, anyway? Personally, my mind has been made up by the time I read the headline. All those dissenting opinions out there just give me heartburn.

chuq, Thanks for the link. What a hoot.
posted by chazw at 5:17 AM on August 23, 2002

In comments to the weblog LA Examiner, Ken Layne writes: "The response was pretty funny -- response from angry readers, etc. And these idiots on Metafilter seems to have a lot of trouble understanding a simple prank".
posted by xowie at 7:30 AM on August 23, 2002

Idiots on MetaFilter, eh? Out of all the people who posted here, only 1 or maybe 2 thought it was real...
posted by cell divide at 9:45 AM on August 23, 2002

You asked for it Ken, you got it.

Anyway, Tony Ortega works hard and writes terrific journalism all the time. He deserves to have a little fun now and then

I don't know whether he deserves to have a little fun. I think what his readership deserves is for him to put the fun back in funny.
posted by haqspan at 11:14 AM on August 23, 2002

Anyway, Tony Ortega works hard and writes terrific journalism all the time.

Yeah, but if he wants to start writing satire, maybe he should read The Onion for a while and see how it's done. It should be funny, for starters.
posted by chuq at 11:26 AM on August 23, 2002