How’s this for irony? The same day The Daily Beast wrote an article on journalism’s gullibility, they get duped into writing a report based on a tweet from the parody twitter account, “Reuter News Braek” (yes, even with the incorrect spelling of “break,” they still used this as their source of information), where they wrongly identified the Quebec Mosque killers.
In his Sunday article, "What is Hiding Behind Donald Trump’s Lies," Clive Irving pontificated on the gullibility of journalism during the Bush years:
The disasters of the Bush years are prologue to the urgent and severe test we face now: whether journalism, our democracy’s last line of defense against abuses of power is up to the job. In the case of Bush, journalism was fatally gullible when it needed to be vigilant, pliant when it needed to be ineluctable…
Well, it certainly seems like the media, in this case at least, The Daily Beast, is still gullible considering they actually based their information on a dummy Twitter account, falsely reporting that it was two white supremacists -- David M.J. Aurine and Mathieu Fournier -- who carried out the mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque on Sunday.
The Daily Beast was quick to change the error of their ways, issuing the following statement:
This piece originally stated that Reuters reported the names of the assailants. However, the information came from a Reuters parody social-media account. We regret the error and have deleted the information.
There’s something to be said about the fact The Daily Beast was the ONLY “news” outlet to actually write a story based on the hoax account. It kind of makes you wonder what other sources The Daily Beast uses to dish out dishonest information in the form of “news.”
The parody account seemed to have gotten wind of the Daily Beast’s story, later tweeting:
“It’s not my fault modern journalists are all gullible morons.”
Perhaps Mr. Irving should do a follow-up story on just how gullible and pliant the media is when reporting news, beginning with the very publication he writes for – the Daily Beast.
It's not uncommon for the early reporting on crimes to get the suspects wrong. The problem here was using a parody site for information. Fox News reported the Quebec mosque shooting suspect was a Moroccan, which also had to be walked back.
