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

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.

Comments

You heard it here first

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Trump committed suicide! 100% true story.

We wish!

[Grog6]

lol.

Demonstrating something we already knew.

[BigBuckHunter]

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.

Re:Demonstrating something we already knew.

[dj245]

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.

Re:Demonstrating something we already knew.

[Kjella]

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.

Re:Demonstrating something we already knew.

[PopeRatzo]

I was taught in elementary school to check sources and not rely on a single source. Even (especially) wikipedia was to be questioned.

If you learned not to question Wikipedia in elementary school, that means I have moles on my ass that are older than you.

That's exactly what I needed this holiday weekend. Thanks a lot.

Re:Demonstrating something we already knew.

[Kjella]

If you learned not to question Wikipedia in elementary school, that means I have moles on my ass that are older than you. That's exactly what I needed this holiday weekend. Thanks a lot.

If you lasted that long you got off easy, 13 years ago someone posted a troll post about how Stallman was a dinosaur from the 256 color era. I was thinking back to my C64 with 16 colors and that's when it really hit me that I was officially older than the dinosaurs. At the time I was 24, rythmic sports gymnastic and snowboarding got nothing on IT when it comes to obsolescence. I should probably be put in a museum by now.

Re:Clicks are all that matter

[SeaFox]

Looks like the Journalists are cutting our throats.

Don't kid yourself, "journalists" disappeared a decade ago. What you have now are "personalities" on TV and glorified bloggers in print.

Yeeehaw! This race to the bottom brought to you by Brawndo! The Thirst Mutilator!

It's the reason for change

[Okian Warrior]

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.)

Re:Et tu, Slashdot?

[konohitowa]

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.

Re:Clicks are all that matter

[ShanghaiBill]

Don't kid yourself, "journalists" disappeared a decade ago.

You are experiencing false nostalgia. There was never a golden age of "real" journalists. Journalists misreported the WMD evidence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Monica-gate and Iran-Contra were reported in alt-media, including tabloids, long before mainstream journalists start paying attention. Nixon almost got away with Watergate, and JFK did get away with a lot of philandering and cheating that the press covered up in exchange for access.

It is easier to find the truth today than ever before. You just need to filter through a lot of crap to get to it.

Re:Et tu, Slashdot?

[CaptainDork]

You can check out any time you like.
But you can never leave.

Re:Clicks are all that matter

[thegarbz]

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.

Re: Huffington Post? Politico?

[coteriescavenger]

CTR hired the same old propagandists to win over the tech community. These stories are the prelude to a move to control media outlets that they don't deem "real" (i.e. the ones that aren't in their pockets).

Re:This story is fake

[tburkhol]

All of this fake news is destroying our country. Good thing we just elected a President committed to rooting out vicious lies told by the media and to holding them accountable.

Honestly, this all sounds like the opening volleys of an astroturf campaign to restrict freedom of speech and freedom of press.

Obama in 2013 signed in that propaganda was okay

[Nyder]

In 2013 Obama signed a bill that in part, allowed the use of propaganda in the USA. Something that wasn't allowed before then. Since then we seen effects it has had. Mainly in this election with the fake stories being ran along side real stories.

This is why no one fact checks anymore, no need to.

Wag that dog...

[Julz]

One step closer to Idiocracy. Add this to all those "conference" and "journal" sites and businesses that have been doing this for years now.