{"id":170,"date":"2005-07-27T23:43:59","date_gmt":"2005-07-28T03:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2005\/07\/27\/stupid-news-tricks\/"},"modified":"2005-07-27T23:43:59","modified_gmt":"2005-07-28T03:43:59","slug":"stupid-news-tricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2005\/07\/27\/stupid-news-tricks\/","title":{"rendered":"Stupid News Tricks"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

There are some stories that are just too silly to take
\nseriously.  You often run across them in the news and in popular
\nbooks.  And yet they are not jokes; standard news outlets and
\npublishers — if not the best, at
\nleast internationally-known names — publish them and stand by
\nthem.  The canonical story format is: vague allegations<\/span>, alarming
\nhyperbole, unsourced <\/span>quotes, and unlikely statements presented without comment as fact. 
\nSometimes the subject is political, sometimes corporate, sometimes
\n“When chickadees attack!<\/span>” human interest.  In each case it is fun
\nto guess why <\/span>the stories are being propagated.  <\/p>\n

The question for news reliability is, what does this say about how much
\nnews accuracy or relevance matters to readers?  Does anyone really
\ncare<\/span> to have reliable news?  What kinds of guarantees do we have
\nfrom even the best articles?  Are there particular classes of news
\narticles that can be as random and fictitious <\/span>as you like without
\ndamaging the societal web<\/span>?  Are there other types of news which
\nshould be handled by only extremely reliable organizations? <\/p>\n

A tip o’ the keys to Saadi <\/span>for the pointer to this recent beauty: 
\n<\/p>\n

Bin Laden (spelled any number of ways) is out to kill… thousands of
\nAmerican coke-heads.  With poisoned cocaine.  [Sky News]<\/a>  [Fox News<\/a>] 
\nOh, by the way, this was three years ago and it’s a slow news
\nweek.  We had a hot tip on this one.  Did we remember a
\ngratuitous 9\/11 reference?  Good. \n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are some stories that are just too silly to take seriously.  You often run across them in the news and in popular books.  And yet they are not jokes; standard news outlets and publishers — if not the best, at least internationally-known names — publish them and stand by them.  The canonical story format […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indescribable"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}