An interview with a fake news site

The American Press Institute interviews the founders of Nipsys News, which is one of those sites that allows anyone to create fake news stories. Most recently Nipsys was responsible for a viral hoax alleging that the the legal drinking age in the U.S. would soon change to 25. The founders of Nipsys gloss over the ethics of what they're doing with some hand-waving about "freedom of expression." But at the end of the interview they offer some advice about how to identify fake news. And it's actually good advice: "We just advise readers to check if the information from the article can be found in other sources as well. Don’t trust just one source."

Journalism

Posted on Wed Aug 27, 2014


Comments

In theory, that's good advice. But what is it worth when so many "trustworthy news sources" - CNN! - don't follow it themselves? Soon you have a plethora of sources, all ultimately deriving from the one, bogus source, and all quoting one another.
Posted by Richard Bos  on  Sun Aug 31, 2014  at  08:02 AM
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.