An astute friend sends this one along to us:
Here is a case study in how fake news spreads:
Read the link (blow) about how a cartoonist posted a tweet with a fake
photo-shot of an alleged passage from the new book about Steve Bannon
and President Trump. The cartoonist parody excerpt shows a passage
claiming that on his first night in the White House, Trump complained he
couldn't get "The Gorilla Channel" (which, unless you count NatGeo or
Animal Planet specials, does NOT exist in real life). The fake excerpt
goes on to read that aides frantically edited together gorilla videos
and put them on the internal closed-circuit channel to POTUS TV.
The cartoonist parody is funny and would have been enjoyable if read as
the cartoon it was intended.
But read how legit media, without independent checking, reported it as
fact. The meme spread to the point that Netflix had to post asking
people not to clog their customer service lines asking if they carried
"The Gorilla Channel." To their credit, the clever folks at the real
Dian Fossey Gorilla Research Center used the fake meme as a segue into a
fundraising pitch.
It causes one to shudder at the direction of a country where people who
fell for "The Gorilla Channel" parody without independent fact check are
the ones to distribute the news to the masses and those who receive the
fake news forward and retweet without checking.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/let’s-talk-about-the-gorilla-channel-for-one-more-day/ar-BBHWBjQ?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
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