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Saturday, April 30, 2005

Fake news all the time

I like fake news
Well, I like it on the Comedy Channel when it is done openly, with a sense of humour and actual factual information as the base.

Last night our local NBC affiliate (WJAC out of Johnstown Pa. 11pm news) ran a top of the hour "Consumer Alert", explaining that the AARP was ripping off its members...
Story was an interview with a Mr Jarvis of USA Next.

Problem is, it was fake news. A precanned tape, I believe; an attack ad run as a news story. By an organization that is essentially a republican party front for damaging the AARP. How stupid is this.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

unfortunately it wasn't a canned video news release. it was a cox news produced piece, spurred by a paper release USA Next put out. i called cox and they said they called aarp for comment but they declined. that still doesn't excuse the lack of any attempt on cox's behalf to represent usa next accurately (as opposed to some neutral seniors advocate).

3:36 PM  
Blogger Steinn said...

Hm, that is interesting.
So not fake news, but news specifically generated in response to a press release.
That's actually scarily like the model for science press releases. But the analogy here would be like cox doing a video clip on some creationist front claiming that astronomy was defrauding students and the anchor saying the AAS had no comment.

11:42 PM  

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