Brian Williams has gone, but false news is bigger business than ever | Emily Bell

The web has simultaneously enabled an accelerated cycle of untrue stories and rumour, and the ability to debunk themEvery journalist is familiar with the type of story that is “too good to check”. It is a warning label on tales that beg to be true but probably aren’t. In the pre-social-media era, an incorrect story, and sometimes an outright lie, might have sat hidden in plain sight for months or even years. Spectacular fabrications such as those of the New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, who was discovered in 2003 to have fabricated or plagiarised elements of dozens of stories, rocked venerable institutions to their core. Last week the US news establishment took another torpedo to its hull.Brian Williams, the host of NBC’s Nightly News, was suspended last week for six months with no pay, after a military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, published a story where Williams admitted he had exaggerated a story about flying in a helicopter that came under fire in Iraq. The incident in 2003 happened when Williams was, in fact, following a helicopter that was struck by missile fire, but in retellings he shifted to a position where not only had his helicopter had been hit, but the US crew “figured out how to land safely”. It just wasn’t true. To make matters worse for NBC news executives, Williams posted a rather mealy-mouthed apology on Facebook without any of them knowing. Related: Is NBC firing Brian Williams, or just humiliating him? The conflation of information and... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2015-02-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with: #plain sight

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