A quantitative comparison of spread of BS vs. NonBS
Tweets by the same person. https://t.co/Do1akacBVl— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) May 28, 2017
On Saturday we told you about a BBC journo who tweeted that President Trump wasn’t wearing headphones to listen to the translation of a speech at the G7 Summit. That turned out to be false, as it was learned that Trump was wearing a single earpiece in his right ear, but by then the bogus story had spread with the help of NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell and others:
JOURNALISM! Andrea Mitchell helps spread debunked #FakeNews about Trump at G7 https://t.co/AwlbNXAiR5
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) May 27, 2017
The BBC journo later tweeted a correction, but the damage was done. Frank Luntz compared the original false info to the correction:
• Tweet saying @POTUS ignored Italian translation headphones: 14,000 retweets
• Tweet correcting that he had smaller earpiece: 42 retweets pic.twitter.com/fd8S3ZZZbp
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) May 27, 2017
The power of “fake news” and those who help it spread:
So true, alas, time after time. https://t.co/BdG6j1DhSN
— Andrew Malcolm (@AHMalcolm) May 29, 2017
Truth isn't as sexy as spreading a false story. https://t.co/RU2kcChrIc
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) May 29, 2017
https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/869184531890397186
How about better journalism? Just a thought https://t.co/7NkNUQeXQJ
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) May 29, 2017
Update: Here’s where the “original tweet vs. correction” numbers stand as of this morning, via @NumbersMuncher:
Tweet incorrectly stating Trump wasn't listening to world leaders now at about 20K RTs.
Corrected tweet that he had earpiece: just 175 RTs. pic.twitter.com/39woiD8ZaA
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) May 29, 2017
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