Google News is Sometimes Fake

[Steelbank]

I just read an article on business 2.0 that showed some of the news stories on google news is fake.

I have recently come across this more and more. Any thoughts?

[tedster]

Note: the article is here:

[money.cnn.com...]

[Alex_Miles]

I come from the UK where propoganda gets dished out like sweeties. I reckon most news is fake.

[Jane_Doe]

That's why the Daily Show on Comedy Central (in the U.S.) has such a cult following and is such a great spoof on the regular news media. Their slogan is "The most trusted name in fake news." :-)

They are so critical and so much more questioning than the regular media that even though their slogan is meant just to be funny, ironically they often truly are more trustworthy than the traditional media.

[jomaxx]

Exactly, this is hardly limited to Google News.

An appallingly high proportion of news coverage is basically spoon-fed to the press and is never fact-checked. Or to put it another way, it's fact-checked AFTER it gets published.

[theBear]

"Or to put it another way, it's fact-checked AFTER it gets published."

Sometimes.

[Phil_Payne]

I once gave a long interview to a very young female who frankly knew nothing about the subject matter. I spent a whole day with her and taught her pretty much everything superficial about mainframe computing.

(My press cuttings page is easy to find.)

She called me on publication day in floods of tears: "Have you seen what they did to my story?"

I later had the chance to compare the copy she'd submitted (pretty reasonable) with what appeared in print.

This was at the start of my press relations career, about 25 years ago.

I have long hoped that there is a specially brutal room in Hades, reserved for subeditors. I have NO problems with journalists, but I could write out a list of subeditors who should be conscripted for front line service in Iraq.

And this is ridiculously off-charter. Don't be surprised if it vanishes.