Thursday, June 16, 2022

"Layers of Fact-Checkers"

News organizations like to pretend that are professional journalists and are therefore trustworthy, not sources of disinformation.  You may recall that when Dan Rather ran an utterly false story about George W. Bush's 1970s Air National Guard service with a memo that bloggers proceeded to demonstrate was created with Microsoft Word, which did not exist for another decades.  CBS responded with talk about layers of fact checks, contrasted with people blogging in their pajamas.  That is why PJM was originally PajamasMedia.

To their credit, 6/16/22 USA Today just pulled a number of news stories:

After receiving an external correction request, USA TODAY audited the reporting work of Gabriela Miranda. The audit revealed that some individuals quoted were not affiliated with the organizations claimed and appeared to be fabricated. The existence of other individuals quoted could not be independently verified. In addition, some stories included quotes that should have been credited to others. 

As a result, USA TODAY removed 23 articles from its website and other platforms for not meeting our editorial standards. The headlines of the articles are listed below. Miranda has resigned as a reporter for USA TODAY and the USA TODAY Network.

How much of those stories is false?  Who knows.  But with all the other news stories that turned out to be false, or based on false claims from anonymous sources (RussiaGate), and Weather Channel weather reporting:



Today show kayaking in ankle deep water:



  

No comments:

Post a Comment