Interactive experiment
FOX THE NEWS
Getting all your news from Fox News is a bad idea for a litany of reasons. However, this blinders-on approach to current events is a reality for millions of Americans. So my friends and I made a handy web tool that somewhat forcibly encourages Fox fans to expand their media consumption horizons. Fox the News re-skins New York Times and Washington Post articles to look more like the conservative network they know and love.
Simply cut and paste the URL from any NYT or WaPo story into our website and it’s magically transformed into something Hannity himself would think is legit. Give it a try; your under-informed uncle is sure to love it! Unfortunately, our pals at Fox News sent us a letter threatening legal action, so the tool no longer works. But a cease and desist from Fox is an award in my book!
When a story is re-skinned by our service, the resulting Fox'd up article has a slew of easter eggs that hopefully will further broaden our new readers' outlooks:
1. Header links click through to additional news sources like AP (US link) and Reuters (World link).
2. Users can share the templatized Fox the News links through their own Facebook and Twitter accounts, which hopefully unknowing high school classmates will stumble across on their social feeds.
3 + 4. Our very convincing fake banner ads take the viewer to the donation pages for the National Immigration Law Center and Planned Parenthood.
5. Much like the “ads”, the “more stories” section links to charities and nonprofits associated with the subject matter alluded to in the headline. For example, the “Major concealed-carry bill picks up momentum” story links to the gun control charity, Everytown.
6. Every article filtered through the Fox the News system credits the author as well as the original source. No one likes a lawsuit!