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TV News Outlets Taken In by Baby-Naming Hoax

Mar 5, 2013  •  Post A Comment

Dozens of television outlets, including CNN, Fox News and NBC’s "Today," were taken in by a baby-naming hoax, TVNewser.com reports.

The hoax is the latest in a series of stories that have been reported as true by television news but turned out to be false, the piece reports. The new hoax comes after it was revealed that a "viral video" of a pig rescuing a goat was fake, and after Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o was revealed to have a fake girlfriend.

"Hoaxes are apparently in vogue now," the story notes.

In the latest hoax, TV news programs reported that a woman was offering to name her baby based on an online poll in exchange for $5,000. It turned out that the woman was an actress, and the poll was created by a website as a publicity stunt.

The TVNewser story notes: "It is unrealistic to expect TV producers or bookers to catch every single hoax, especially when people are pushing it and deliberately trying to deceive. Working in TV is a grind, and staffers work long hours to fill endless minutes of airtime. Most of the people producers deal with are straight shooters, or at least not deliberately lying to them, but when you have liars, there is only so much you can do. In the case of the baby-naming hoax: the website was real, and was pushing it."

7 Comments

  1. “Most of the people producers deal with are straight shooters, or at least not deliberately lying to them, but when you have liars, there is only so much you can do.” Oh yeah! How about doing the news for a change? You push every talking point the current administration in Washington gives you and then complain about other “liars”! What happened to fact checking? What happened to investigative journalism? You get hoaxed because you are used to simply repeating whatever crosses your desk. Heck – Dan Rather would simply make stuff up. The networks “creatively” edit video to move their leftist agenda and we still let them call it news! Network news is news like reality TV is reality!

  2. “Investigative Journalism”? Please. How about going back to Journalism 101, and simply finding a second source before airing a story. Must be too labor intensive for Fox, the Today Show and CNN.
    And while we’re on the subject, how about the MAJOR NEWS WEBSITE which, this past weekend posted the headline “Jay Leno To Leave Tonight Show – RUMOR”. Really? Are the networks stretched so thin that they have to report RUMORS?!

  3. “If it’s on the internet, it has to be true..”
    What a bunch of lazy maroons.

  4. Yes, and I’m your French boyfriend, I also model. Bon Jour! This sounds familiar!
    Maybe State Farm knows why.

  5. “Working in TV is a grind, and staffers work long hours to fill endless minutes of airtime”
    If you can’t take the heat… get out of the kitchen. I think it’s time to hang up the “News” facade, when it comes to this statement. If you do not find a way to ACCURATELY inform the public with the CORRECT and TRUTHFUL facts, you shouldn’t be in the news business. You have an obligation to inform with the correct info, not info you cannot verify. I’m just waiting for the day one news organization gets sued for this, by the FCC or other public person. It will happen. Just a matter of time.

  6. “…staffers work long hours to fill endless minutes of airtime” Yes, there are reporters so bad that their one minute package seems endless.
    But seriously, that is a problem with our three 24-hour news channels. Rather than report other news happening in the world they look to fill in segments with mindless crap. And these hoaxers know just how to bait & hook some sap to get some good national coverage.

  7. Can you specify what is a “24-hour news channel?” So far, I have not seen one of those since local “cut ins” before the top of each hours, back in the early 90’s. Now on all channels news takes a 12 hour or more break… for opinion and Hollywood gossip looping through the night. For example, O’Reily is not news. Joy Behar is not news. Erin Burnet and Anderson Cooper are not news. Those are opinion and specialty shows. Where in the USA do we have a 24-hour news source? I don’t even know of one… and I’m in the business!

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