Fox News fooled by fake $1 billion jetpack story
October 7th, 2010 - 8:23 pm ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt
Embarrassingly, Fox News has fallen for fake news about a $1billion jetpack story. Fox News reported that Los Angeles has planned to spend a whopping $1billion on jetpacks to equip its police force. The report claimed that the jetpack was capable flying a person at a maximum speed of 63 miles per hour.
However the story turned out to be a hoax. And incredibly it is still not clear where Fox got the news from. Los Angeles officials denied the story flatly saying the city has not bought a car for its police force for two years. “We certainly haven’t bought any jetpacks. We haven’t bought [squad] cars for two years,” according to police chief Charlie Beck.
The news, which was initially aired on Fox News on Tuesday, received further discussion on the network’s morning show “Fox and Friends”. During the discussion the network was critical of the decision by the city to acquire 10,000 jetpacks for its police force at the rate of $100,000 each when the city was struggling for cash. The hosts of the show accused the city authorities of misplaced priorities because they were unable to pay for the city’s police force overtime.
The station retracted the story within an hour embarrassingly.
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Tags: 1 billion, beck, city authorities, fake news, force overtime, fox and friends, fox news, hoax, hosts, jetpacks, maximum speed, miles per hour, morning show, police chief, police force, priorities, squad cars
