Fox Falls For Phony Jetpack Story

Fox News didn't help its credibility when it fell for a false story about the Los Angeles Police Department spending $1 billion on jetpacks for its forces, according to Huffington Post.

HuffPost reports that the Fox & Friends report that ran Tuesday might well have come from a Weekly World News story:

“We certainly haven't bought any jetpacks,” police chief Charlie Beck told the LA Times. “We haven't bought [squad] cars for two years.”

The hosts of “Fox and Friends,” the network's morning show, missed a great opportunity to yell “makeup!” But they were mildly skeptical when first discussing the concept and retracted the report within an hour. They initially said that Los Angeles was ordering 10,000 jetpacks at a cost of $100,000 each. The Times notes that the city “is regularly sending its police detectives home because it can't pay all their overtime.” There's no money for anything this over the top.

Where on earth could such an out-of-this-world report come from?

Gawker first noted that it probably came from a story in the Weekly World News.

See the Fox report below:

CNN's Jeannie Moos couldn't help but use the goof to make fun of Fox:

It also reminded us of another Fox screw-up in 2008 when it falsely reported a story that led to a lawsuit against Fox & Friends' Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, which was dismissed but only after a judge called them “gulible.”

See it below: