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False Porn-on-CNN Report Shows How Quickly Fake News Spreads (usatoday.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the raunchy-rumors dept.

Slashdot reader xtsigs writes: "No, despite what you read, CNN did not run porn for 30 minutes Thursday, as was reported by Fox News, the New York Post, Variety and other news organizations, several of which later corrected their stories," reports USA Today. The story goes on to explain how the story started (a single tweet), how it was quickly picked up by media outlets (without verifying if CNN actually did, in truth, broadcast porn), how it was then retracted by some outlets (but not others).

Other outlets jumped on the story of the story while, as of early Saturday morning some sites are still running the original story claiming CNN did, in fact, broadcast 30 minutes of porn.

8 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Demonstrating something we already knew. by BigBuckHunter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think its good that a few individuals have found a way to cleary demonstrate what many people already knew... That the 'news' media is a joke, and only exists to serve the corporations which own the media outlet.

    1. Re:Demonstrating something we already knew. by dj245 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think its good that a few individuals have found a way to cleary demonstrate what many people already knew... That the 'news' media is a joke, and only exists to serve the corporations which own the media outlet.

      Good that it is being exposed to the people who read the corrections / false story reports. Not good for anyone who didn't and still thinks the original story is real.

      I was taught in elementary school to check sources and not rely on a single source. Even (especially) wikipedia was to be questioned. That seems to have all gone out the window. You don't need any qualifications to write news, and nobody would check anyway. The internet was supposed to level the playing field for everything and everybody. It did that, but it turns out that most players are terrible.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    2. Re:Demonstrating something we already knew. by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I was taught in elementary school to check sources and not rely on a single source. Even (especially) wikipedia was to be questioned. That seems to have all gone out the window. You don't need any qualifications to write news, and nobody would check anyway. The internet was supposed to level the playing field for everything and everybody. It did that, but it turns out that most players are terrible.

      Welcome to clickonomics. Sure, you could verify every story... and you'd be very last to publish every time. The primary reason it sorta worked before was not that journalists were better or that they really cared more about the facts, it's was that in most cases there was a day's cycle. Spend an extra three hours researching? No problem as long as you meet the deadline, it's still in tomorrow's newspaper. And you know your competitors can't copy you until tomorrow and everybody would know that's yesterday's news. Today it's like the story is breaking NOW NOW NOW let's run with it and they all copy each other like crazy to not miss out. The exclusive material is often not "news" anymore, it's an in-depth story or featured topic because anything everyone legitimately can report on is near instantly copied even if it was your scoop. The incentives don't reward investigative journalism.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  2. Et tu, Slashdot? by konohitowa · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Does /. really have to embrace and promulgate every media narrative?

    1. Re:Et tu, Slashdot? by konohitowa · · Score: 2, Insightful

      True. Maybe it's time to stop frequenting this site. It's a bit like reading a really bad book from a series that started out well; I keep hoping it will get better.

  3. It's the reason for change by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What's wrong with fake news? Most people don't vote anyways.

    Fake news will be the reason to implement all the "fake news" site blockers that the major players have been wanting.

    They spent two weeks bringing the term "fake news" into the public consciousness, now they need to convince everyone that it's a real problem.

    Soon we'll start seeing mitigation attempts. Google will delist certain sites, ad companies will drop certain sites (which has apparently already happened), some sites will lose their domains, some will get hit with trademark violations of their names, etc etc.

    You have to convince the people that there's a need for change.

    That's why it's important right now.

    (They don't want a repeat of this year's election.)

  4. Re:Clicks are all that matter by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But journalists did what you said. They existed. These days you could replace most of what we call journalism with a computer based re-tweeter which adds some boilerplate text around the tweet and no one would know. The only real original thoughts are those from people being interviewed and these could be done with text-to-speech.

    Comparing what happened during the Iraq has WMD era to now, while both were their own flavours of bad, doesn't make much sense.

  5. Re:Clicks are all that matter by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Compare the WMD fiasco to the Tonkin Gulf incident. Both were based on lies and both were used as justification to drag America into stupid wars. But the Tonkin Gulf lies were published with much less fact checking by "journalists", and were not exposed until nearly three decades later. That would not happen today. There is no justification for the claim that journalism is "getting worse". Today, there is less filtering of BS, but also less filtering of the truth.