Fact-Checking Challenged Journalists Told To Use Google And Bloggers For Help
from the let-them-do-the-analysis-for-you dept
An amusing article in the Guardian about the variety of spoof websites that have taken in journalists over the past few years (they miss out on my own personal spoof, Geek Girl Services, which fooled folks at TechTV). The writer points out that, now that fact checking has gone the way of the dinosaur, lazy journalists might want to discover two quick tools that could help them avoid looking like a fool: Google and bloggers. He suggests that any time you come across a site that seems too crazy to be real, before writing up your "you won't believe what you find on the internet..." story, go to Google and search around to see what the bloggers say about it - since they're often quick to sniff out the fact that it's fake. In other words, let the bloggers be your (free) fact checkers. There's also at least one small thing in the article itself that isn't true, and I'm assuming he's put it there on purpose to try to fool a few more journalists, but I'll leave that for you to figure out yourself.
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+hoax
My mother-in-law asks me about EVERY con-job with the same naive question, "is this real?" No matter how much I explain the key facets of a hoax, she continues to ask me. I think it's just a conversational crutch. If it were her job though, google +hoax is almost all she'd need.
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