Time Magazine Falls for Satire News Site Article

Time Magazine published an article quoting The Beaverton as a source. The problem is that The Beaverton is a satire news site.

Trust in the media has long plunged to all time lows. This is far from a one time thing as this has become a long running problem. What’s more, the factors that went into this are numerous. For instance, over the last couple of decades, venture capital has been dictating that news rooms slim down to bare bones news rooms, shunning a robust team of reporters in favour of pumping out garbage and resting on the laurels of the reputation the news rooms have achieved in the past.

So, it’s probably why so many news organizations have fallen into various low quality patterns in terms of coverage. Whether it is the view from nowhere, both sides are bad lazy “journalism” or the pushing of a right wing agenda because right wing wealthy billionaires have bought the organization, the low quality that comes out the other end is hardly a surprise. It is also of little surprise that the strategy of mainstream media is a poorly thought out campaign of demonizing the internet with endless moral panic and other forms of technophobia along with berating anyone who happens to be younger than the boomer generation for everything they happen to represent.

Yet, for all of the garbage pumped out these days, one of the long running arguments is that they (the mainstream media) is the bulwark of truth. They argue that they are the ones that “pay attention”, cut through the noise, and are the professionals in the business. As far as they are concerned, if you want truthful and accurate news, you go running to them. If you want lies, disinformation, and noise, you go to the internet. They are the ones that do the real research because their information is fact checked unlike some shady pipsqueak randomly found on the internet. The mainstream media is never wrong. They are always right. Anyone who says otherwise must be one of them conspiracy theorists online.

So, that leads us to today. The highly professional and totally fact-checked bulwark of journalism, Time Magazine, finds itself being hugely embarrassed. The reason? They published an article citing a satire news site as a source for their coverage. Nice fact-checking Time Magazine! From the CBC:

In a recent article about the strained U.S. relationships with other countries, Time Magazine included a made-up quote from Canadian satire site The Beaverton — seemingly as fact.

In the Oct. 1 article, there’s a section that references U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra’s recent appearance at an event hosted by the Halifax Chamber of Commerce.

Time quoted Hoekstra: “‘A Canada that it would be very easy to target with 500% steel tariffs, or one patriot missile aimed at Parliament Hill,’ he added, rather incredulously.”

Except Hoekstra didn’t say that — The Beaverton, a satirical news site in Canada akin to The Onion, made it up for this article titled, “US Ambassador threatens to tariff, annex, and bomb Canada if anti-American sentiment doesn’t improve.”

Even if you didn’t realize that the Beaverton is satire, you should have a BS detector that lit up like a Christmas tree reading those quotes. Yet, here we are pointing and laughing at the stupidity of Time Magazine carrying those quotes as facts.

One possible theory that actually makes a heck of a lot of sense is that Time Magazine, or at least the author, employed AI (Artificial Intelligence) to write the article in question. There has been a push in the industry to try and adopt the broken technology of AI with the firm belief that it’s practically perfect and using it just means you are staying ahead of the curve. Obviously, AI can’t really distinguish between satire and factual journalism, so I can totally see that quote making its way into the article if AI was used. This combined with the possibility that the journalist that published the article didn’t double check the quotes afterwards. If that is what happened, I would not be surprised.

It’s also possible that a novice wrote the article and wasn’t all that familiar with the media landscape. Journalism mistakes that do happen include not checking dates of publication or ensuring that the source is not satire. I wouldn’t know about that given that the original article has since been taken down.

Some might wonder if this is one of the worst mistakes made by the media. Personally, I don’t think so. I don’t know what would be the worst mistake, but the worst one I can recall offhand is the notorious KTVU “Captain Sum Ting Wong” screw up. Yes, there’s footage:

I would personally consider that one far worse even if it is absolutely hilarious. My understanding was the NTSB employee that gave those fake names out was fired for that. There were also reprimands and firings on the media side as well. The more you understand how broadcast news works, the worse this mistake looks.

Having said that, yeah, I would say quoting a satire news site is a pretty bad screw up. Time Magazine people are likely feeling pretty humiliated right about now.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.