An American newspaper has joined the Getting Punked by a Fake News Site Club: The Washington Post fell for an article claiming Sarah Palin had signed a deal to host her own show, Palin's America, on Al Jazeera America. The Daily Currant—which currently features headlines like "Catholic Church Considering Jerry Sandusky as Next Pope" and "Glenn Beck Calls 911 After Accidentally Eating Halal Pizza"—ran the original story last week, and Suzi Parker reported it as fact in a Post blog today.
According to the National Review, the post originally even quoted this line from the Daily Currant story, which may have been a hint to some that the story was fake:
- "As you all know, I’m not a big fan of newspapers, journalists, news anchors, and the liberal media in general. But I met with the folks at al-Jazeera [the Daily Currant spelled it 'Al-JaJizzraa'] and they told me they reach millions of devoutly religious people who don’t watch CBS or CNN. That tells me they don’t have a liberal bias."
Other hints Parker missed: The Daily Currant quoted a supposed Al Jazeera exec named Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer bin Mohammed bin Thani Al-Thani and a NY-based media analyst named Elizabeth Lemon. And there's more! It also quoted Palin later referring to the network as "Al-Jazimian" and saying, "Alaska is located very close to the Middle East, yet for some reason we don’t have many Arab tourists." The
Post has since corrected its story. (More
Sarah Palin stories.)
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