We see it time and again, an emotional story gets lots of airtime, and then is found to be a scam. Today’s example comes from CNN.
Sympathetic single mom with 3 kids, was selling blood to buy groceries, very concerned that she was going to get evicted. Set up a GoFundMe, got CNN to put her on air, CNN ran a very sympathetic story and promoted the GoFundMe.
CNN did not investigate. They just ran the story.
A twitter rando investigated, and found the kids don’t belong to the woman, the whole thing is a scam.
CNN is now investigating, and will run a story or two about the woman being a scammer.
In the old days, CNN would investigate first rather than lend credibility to this. They didn’t want to be wrong. Now though, the economics have changed. CNN will get TWO news cycles out of this story.
In the old days, they’d spend money up front on investigation, and then kill the fake story. 100% cost, no revenue.
Now they make money by running the fake story, then spend a little money to investigate, and make more money blaming the woman (never themselves) when they report the fake story. Very little cost, 2x revenue.
They have sacrificed integrity for money, and it’s still working for them because people still pay attention to them.
The only way this ends is if we make it end. Don’t watch CNN, don’t retweet CNN. Starve them.
CNN is the only reason this woman was able to scam idiots out of $230K by pretending to be a single mom getting evicted. Now they're investigating it, which they probably should do before reporting.https://t.co/yISRg7XjbG @barnes_law
— TB Daily News (@TurtleboyTweets) August 8, 2021