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False Porn-on-CNN Report Shows How Quickly Fake News Spreads (usatoday.com) 158

Posted by EditorDavid 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.
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False Porn-on-CNN Report Shows How Quickly Fake News Spreads More

False Porn-on-CNN Report Shows How Quickly Fake News Spreads

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  • This story is fake (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Like most of the ones on dotslash.

    Now shut up you poo poo heads

    • 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.

  • You heard it here first (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26, 2016 @01:37PM (#53365813)

    Donald Trump committed suicide! 100% true story.

  • especially in a post-ad blocker era where online advertising has become so cutthroat. Looks like the Journalists are cutting our throats.

    • Looks like the Journalists are cutting their throats.

      FTFY

    • Re:Clicks are all that matter (Score:4, Informative)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @01:57PM (#53365953)

      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!

      • Re:Clicks are all that matter (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @02:21PM (#53366079)

        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:Clicks are all that matter (Score:4, Insightful)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @03:36PM (#53366485)

          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: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

            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.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Dutch Gun ( 899105 )

          Don't forget the media themselves have their own controversies, such a rigging car crashes [latimes.com] or using laughably fake memos created in MS Word [wikipedia.org] as "proof" to impugn Bush's National Guard activities during the Vietnam War.

          This "fake news" is a backlash from the mainstream media that realized that they don't actually *control* alternate media sources, and it terrifies them. Because, after all, those who haven't gone through journalism school and don't work for a real new organization can't possibly take their pl

          • The lying press worried about lies as it lies. [youtu.be]

            Hey! You're no supposed to lie! Only *we* are allowed to lie! We own it, bitches.

          • Except someone pointed out there were machines in that era that could have created the "memo" and the Army had some. How it would have come to be typed on such a machine, I haven't seen and someone counterargued that the source of the memo wouldn't have used said machine, but the ball is still very much in play on that note.

            • Nope, not even remotely. It's been confirmed by those who worked at the Texas Air National Guard during that period that they did not use typewriters which could possibly reproduce the proportional fonts and superscripts in that memo, nor that they typed the memo in question. And are you really trying to tell me that you believe it's even remotely plausible that a memo typed in 1972 would just happen to match up with the default MS Word 2003 fonts and spacing?

              Please. It was nothing more than a amateurish

              • Just what do you think Microsoft used as a basis for its default font and spacing? Most of what I am reading is saying not that the documents are not authentic without a doubt, but that they can't be authenticated. I don't know what is true. I'm not saying that the other possibility is true, just that I haven't seen enough to rule it out. I don't dream up some implausible explanation, simply because I want it to be true, I maintain a position that something might be false, long after those who claim to kno

                • Just what do you think Microsoft used as a basis for its default font and spacing?

                  Microsoft used TrueType fonts, which had kerning compatible with earlier Linotype systems, something those 1970s typewriters did not use. From Wikipedia again:

                  As Phinney explained, the letterspacing of the Times New Roman font used by Microsoft Word with a modern personal computer and printer employs a system of 18 units relative to the letter height (em), with common characters being 5 to 17 units wide. (The technology allows even finer variability of character widths, but the 18 unit system was chosen for compatibility with the Linotype phototypesetting and earlier hot-metal versions of the font.) In contrast, the variability of character widths available on early 1970s typewriters using proportional letterspacing was more limited, due to the mechanical technology employed. The most sophisticated of these machines, the IBM Selectric Composer, used a system of 9 units relative to the letter height, in which all characters were 3 to 9 units wide. Less complex machines used fewer widths.

                  Differences in individual character widths accumulate over the length of a line, so that comparatively small differences would become readily apparent. Because of the differing character widths employed, the letterspacing exhibited by the Killian documents (matching that produced by a modern computer and printer) could not have been produced with a mechanical typewriter using proportional letterspacing in the early 1970s. At the time the documents were purportedly created, the matching letterspacing could only have been produced using phototypesetting or hot-metal printing. Since it is not a realistic possibility that Killian would have had these documents printed, Phinney concluded that they are almost certainly modern forgeries.

                  It's not just that the "documents can't be authenticated." There's essentially a near-zero chance these could have been written on 1970s typewriters at the Texas Air National Guard offices, as claimed. And that doesn't even account for all the inconsistencies in the memo's content.

                  • That gets to the main question no one has been able to answer: Why isn't it a realistic possibility that the memos were printed?

                    • Typesetting and printing was quite time-consuming and expensive before the age of personal computers and "desktop publishing." It would generally only be done when the cost of the initial setup would be offset by the ability to print a reasonably large run of high quality documents, like books or leaflets. An internal memo (or frankly, *any* internal office document) would not be a candidate for this, as it would be a one-off document. It would certainly just be typed, and copies would be made if needed.

                    • What are your sources? "Typesetting" may have once been time-consuming and expensive, but where do I go to find out the nature of "typesetting" at the time the memo was made and it's role in the U.S. military?

          • How about the events being reported having actually happened. When you report something that never happened. How is that not fake news ?

            But I can see why rightwingers would not like that. All their news fall under that definition up to and including fox.

        • 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.

          I don't remember journalism being involved in any way. This was orchestrated by the Bush administration. You could practically feel the embarrassment of Colin Power when he was showing images with gray smudges on them to the UN, claiming them to be the sites with WMD. He didn't buy the story himself, but he was just obeying orders from Rumsfeld and Cheney, like the good solider he was.

          • *Colin Power -> Colin Powell, of course.

          • I don't remember journalism being involved in any way.

            Some journalists, such as Joe Wilson, exposed some of the lies. They had evidence, but they didn't get much attention. If more journalists had done their job, instead of just parroting propaganda, they might have prevented one of history's dumbest wars.

            You could practically feel the embarrassment of Colin Powell when he was showing images with gray smudges on them to the UN

            Colin Powell also wrote the cover-up of the My-Lai Massacre when he was a young officer in Vietnam, proclaiming that the relationship between the soldiers and villagers was "excellent". His career was bookended at both the beginning and the end by allowing

        • >You are experiencing false nostalgia. There was never a golden age of "real" journalists.

          The media has always been biased in favor of the establishment in America. (Which cuts deeper than the left-wing bias, really.)

          That said, in the 80s there was a distinction between News and Opinion on TV. News reporters would make at least a token effort of presenting both sides (equal treatment principle + fairness doctrine), and opinion pieces were often not found at all in news programs. Newspapers separated out

          • There is another difference. For profit news did not exist. News was a loss leader channels did in between shows. It did not make money... and was not expected to. So you could not buy editorial slant (very easily).
            In our age advertisers wite the news. The mainstream press is still a little better though: but only because they risk being sued for slander if they go too far.

  • Demonstrating something we already knew. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BigBuckHunter ( 722855 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @01:42PM (#53365849)
    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. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @01:49PM (#53365893) Homepage

      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. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @03:00PM (#53366289) Homepage

        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. (Score:4, Informative)

          by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @03:26PM (#53366439) Journal

          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: (Score:3)

            by Kjella ( 173770 )

            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.

          • 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.

            Looks like you're going senile as well. Getting old sucks.

  • Et tu, Slashdot? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by konohitowa ( 220547 )

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

    • Yes.

      However, you have the option regarding posting a response.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by konohitowa ( 220547 )

        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.

    • Try asking again in English.

    • The current "media narrative" stories are probably the single most important issue of the day, underpinning pretty much everything else. Without a functioning media (and everybody agrees it's dysfunctional), we collectively and individually lack the data necessary to make good decisions, and the people as a whole lack the focus to support good decisions and decry bad ones. Good job Slashdot editors; GFY, konohitowa.

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

    • There are no national elections right now.

    • 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 [slashdot.org]), some sites will lose their domains, some will get hit with trademark violations of their names,

  • " CNN did not run porn for 30 minutes Thursday, as was reported by Fox News,"

    Everybody knows that Fox 'News' has only fake 'news'.

  • ... talking about porn down rain.

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

    In the time leading to the 2003 Iraq war, the WMD coverage must have been fake too. This story ran for more than a year!!! [Respectable] news outlets blabbing with government propaganda, that resulted into an unnecessary war, that killed several thousand people! So, this is an example of fake news too?

    Then after that, we blame Russia and those other entities we may not like? Can some soul explain this please? And what is the solution anyway?

    At the State Department, the spokesman dodges questions saying he

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Are you really claiming they didn't have WMDs? What about the US solders that died from them? My neighbor lost her husband and a good friend of mine I went to high school with died from sarin gas in Iraq.

      Plus, that argument isn't valid since there was a ceasefire based upon agreeing to inspections. Hussein broke the ceasefire.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No, fake news is when a news organization makes up a story. The spread of fake news is when a news organization publishes a story which has been made up by someone else. While the difference may be subtle, and both are very bad, in the second case we have to allow for some leeway for deception.

      The US intelligence agencies were pushing false information as justification for that war and many government officials believed it, from congressmen to Colin Powell. That wasn't fake news, that was just a lie. A lie

  • What does that say about "real news" that they didn't due the due diligence to actually discover if the reports were legitimate? Just that "real news" is just as much bullshit as "fake news."

  • ...that Edgar Allen Poe was far ahead of his time...especially when it comes to modern media.

    Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • It seems it has come to this -- we need to occasionally create fake news to see which are the fake news sites that will mindlessly repeat things without fact-checking.

    • We already knew Fox was a fake "news" site. They mindlessly repeated the Republican lie of wmds in Iraq despite reputable news site asking the hard questions about the supposed evidence.

      Even when presented with absolute proof the yellowcake document was a forgery, Fox still ran stories using that document as evidence, then turned around and blamed Valerie Plame's husband for showing the document was fake.

  • ...yes, I understand the entire point of the "fake news" claim is to blame THAT for Trump's victory (setting aside the entirely horrible candidate that routinely insulted half the electorate, approached the election as an entitlement, and never took her opponent seriously), but the fact is that 'fake internet news' has been a thing since the internet was.

    And the reason it's a thing IS BECAUSE the 'real' news organizations have long since (for a number of reasons) lost any credibility whatsoever.

  • ... journalism is dead, replaced by "media," including main stream and social.

    Because there are no longer any reporters on the ground, pranksters and nefarious operatives easily exploit the vacancy.

    The big players save money by scraping crowd-sourced comments as "news" and poor quality is the norm, anyway.

  • Aren't Americans more susceptible to fake news for cultural reasons? Firstly, entitlement. Everybody is entitled without any reasonable responsibility to back the opinion up by facts and arguments.
    Secondly, the for a developed country high percentage of religious folks who somehow are not only OK to ignore or even deny facts like evolution but even want it to be taught in science class. Critical thinking is not promoted or particularly valued.

    Bert

  • He told the first person at the left side of the room a long sentence. That person then passed it on, when it got to the last person he said write down what you were told and compare it to what I said. The sentence changed quite a bit even by the time it got 1/2 way down the class.

  • Maybe the reason it spread so quickly was that CNN initially confirmed it before then denying it?

    CNN first told the DailyMail.com the cable operator 'aired inappropriate content for 30 minutes on CNN last night'
    Said in a follow-up statement: 'RCN assures us that there was no interruption of CNN's programming in the Boston area last night'

    Also, given how unimportant the story is, people simply don't spend much time veryfing it.

  • I Blame FaceBook! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is all FaceBook's fault. ...and the Russians.

    Thanks, Obama.

  • CNN (Score:2, Funny)

    by tylersoze ( 789256 )

    CNN turned into a hard core porn channel so gradually we barely noticed.

  • This sort of thing was possible in the 70s and 80s and did happen a few times for a few minutes on some local stations and networks.

    But a lot has changed since then. Every TV and cable station is now heavily automated. The automation programs run the timing and breaks and it is simply not possible for anyone to switch in anything and have it run for 30 continuous minutes. And even if some human did manage to do it AND nobody noticed, which is not likely as they DO have their own people watching the fee

    • It's the 30 minutes part that makes it look fake to me.

      A minute or two I could buy. A mistake, a prank, a very dissatisfied employee seeking revenge, a hacker somehow gaining access to their media bank. It's very unlikely, but it could happen - but if it did the people watching the feeds would very quickly put an end to it, even if that means a hurried phone call down to the technical staff with an instruction to pull the cables out. You're right, there's no way it could last for thirty minutes.

  • Although it may have just been Wolf Blitzer's beard.

    How about the real story -- CNN has confused "News" with "Reading Tweets".

  • Obama in 2013 signed in that propaganda was okay (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nyder ( 754090 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @07:23PM (#53367545) Journal

    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.

  • One step closer to Idiocracy. Add this to all those "conference" and "journal" sites and businesses that have been doing this for years now.
  • We should float a false news report every couple months just to see how many "news" organizations are stupid enough to bite.
  • Although this story claims it all started with one fake tweet, it's pretty interesting that extra details were reported which were not in the tweet. This USA Today story makes it sound like the tweet was all there was. Yet somehow in the reports there are a bunch of additional details. Maybe the denial is the fake story? Or maybe additional hoaxers filled in the oddly speciic details after the tweet. There's no way for me to know.
  • Seems like news sources should be fired and replace with people who actually research their news

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