CNN Blows It AGAIN

[Bongwater]

Why don't they SCREEN the viewer contributed stories BEFORE they're published in their iReports page?

This morning, a fake story that was all the buzz on Twitter was published on it, claiming pop star Gotye had committed suicide (not many people noticed the little disclaimer "NOT VETTED BY CNN".)

But perhaps they SHOULD put a HOLD on viewer contributed stories (especially ones as obvious as THIS) until the facts are in (if not already obvious. The cause of death was already named - self inflicted gunshot wound.)

It had only been up there 5 minutes by the time I clicked on the link, but this shows you the speed of bulls--t on the internet.) The official cause of death of a major celebrity (who Gotye pretty much is by now, having the biggest hit song of the year so far) is usually withheld for at least an hour in most cases. And requires a press conference of some kind.

Gotye himself quickly tweeted in response to all this, so I'm assuming he is very much alive and otherwise enjoying his day.

Now granted, everybody dies a thousand times on Twitter. Daily. But after the initial reports of the Affordable Health Care Act verdict (which CNN originally claimed it was struck down by the Supreme Court before Chief Justice Roberts had even finished reading the full verdict) and CNN got HUGE flak for that, you'd think they'd be a little tighter with any potential misinformation.

It certainly doesn't help with their credibility that they are so cheap, they don't have an editor there 24/7 to monitor incoming iReports stories. CNN is REALLY tanking right now and this is not helping. I think it's time to clean house and get back to FACT based journalism.

I think the iReports idea is good. But it's only as good as the information it receives and it needs MUCH better filtering. But there are people who have nothing better to do in life than to make up crap to get attention and how CNN could POSSIBLY let this get on THEIR website WITHOUT any editorial sleuthing is beyond me.

To paraphrase Gotye's big hit, now they're just some channel that I used to watch......

 

[rnigma1]

There's a website called swellserver.com that features a fake celebrity-death news story generator. Perhaps someone used this to concoct the Gotye story. (more like "Got ye by the stones, CNN")

 

[Greedy Kilowatt]

THERE'S N0 LEFT IN THE NEWSROOM.

 

[Greedy Kilowatt]

That might have been Freudian.

I meant to say THERE'S NO ONE LEFT IN THE NEWSROOM.

 

[onairb]

So, does this mean 'self inflict gunshot wound' will replace 'died in a mountain-climbing accident' as the favorite cause of fake deaths of celebs on Twitter?

 

[DToTheJ]

@Bongwater: You speak as if you're surprised CNN would allow themselves to get fooled by a faux story. This is a network that has been pranked by Howard Stern "wack packer" Captain Janks many, many times.

@Greedy: I'd consider "no left in the newsroom" bizarro Freudian. :

 

[FreddyE1977]

That might have been Freudian.

I meant to say THERE'S NO ONE LEFT IN THE NEWSROOM.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there.

RSS Feed + Global Distribution - Editor = Trouble

 

[recto101]

The Problem here is that CNN has way too many Ron Burgundy's running the Newsroom and not enough Bernard Shaw's.

 

[benwolf]

To be fair, CNN did not report this. It was a posting from "a fraudulent member" of their social network iReport. That's why the "not vetted by CNN" bar was on it.