Fox News reports on negative feedback from its own phony story

FoxNews.com promoted this story on its home page about federal land that has been closed off in Buenos Aires National Park in Arizona due to public safety concerns:

The article reports (emphasis added):

But the 3,500 acres will remain off-limits for the foreseeable future, she said - despite what she calls an “incredible response” of negative feedback that followed recent reports surrounding the closure. The 3,500-acre parcel is only 3 percent of the entire refuge, Gall said, so she prefers to err on the side of caution.

You might wonder where the “negative feedback” about the closure came from. It was most likely based on a totally made-up Fox News story. As we noted:

In the June 15 report, America Live guest host Shannon Bream says, “A massive stretch of Arizona now off limits to Americans. Critics say the administration is, in effect, giving a major strip of the Southwest back to Mexico.”

There are a few problems with this: A representative of the refuge told Media Matters that the “massive stretch” of land is about five miles square, it's been closed since 2006, and it obviously hasn't been given back to Mexico.

To recap: Fox News completely made up a story (no land was given to Mexico, not an inch) about a small section of a national park that has been closed for 4 years out of safety concerns, and assuming Fox got the quote right (certainly a gamble at this point) from the park's acting refuge manager, “doesn't have a great impact to visitor use on the refuge.” These completely false stories prompted the refuge to post a note on their website:

Recently there were reports in the news stating that the Buenos Aries National Wildlife Refuge was closed. This information is not correct.

And now Fox News is writing a story about the response to a false story that they created. This may be the kind of thing that generates pageviews and ratings, but it bears no resemblance to the truth or journalism.