As Twitchy reported yesterday, a recent New York Times story claimed the paper obtained a government climate change report, insinuating that it had been “leaked” because scientists were concerned President Trump would censor or suppress the information. Right on cue, other media outlets and science publications ran with the “leaked report” angle. The problem was that the report had been publicly available for weeks, wasn’t “leaked” and wasn’t being censored or suppressed by the Trump administration:
Fake News: So much for the ‘leaked’ climate report in the New York Times; Al Gore hardest hit https://t.co/M9vf2Acw4H
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) August 9, 2017
Today the Times did something that’s become a familiar sight these days: Corrected a bogus claim that had already gone viral:
correction by @nytimes: climate report archived @internetarchive, not "first made public" by NYT; https://t.co/tjz5zbe9Q8
— Nancy Watzman (@nwatzman) August 9, 2017
https://twitter.com/Skyhartman/status/895274044349493249
Another @nytimes correction to front page news. #TheSkyIsFalling https://t.co/A6RhMiaLhB pic.twitter.com/2PWP3vGHvP
— James Lea (@jimwlea) August 9, 2017
As we’ve seen lately, “fake news” spreads incredibly fast, but the corrections, not so much. It’s almost like it’s sometimes done on purpose.
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