The Phantom Terrorist Attack: Or How Reuters Screwed Up

Reuters, which has not shown itself to be a particularly good reporting company, has apparently taken to reporting phantom terrorist attacks in Israel. They ran a story that essentially mimics an attack that occurred in November 2004 as though it occurred hours ago.

Does anyone at Reuters actually check to see if the stuff they're claiming to have reported actually happened.

Meanwhile, other news agencies might pick this story up and carry it without hesitation because of the way news feeds work.

It's already happened with Google News.

Hat tip: LGF.

Let's not forget that Reuters already knows that its reputation is in tatters. There's even been internal memos that state:

"Our content platform is burning," wrote David Schlesinger in a memo intended for 10 senior managers, but was read by thousands of employees in the company's daily briefing. "Our news is perceived as not having enough insight; our data is perceived as having terrible quality problems. Both news and data are not nearly the differentiating factors in Reuters' offering that they should be, that they could be, that they need to be."

Moral of the story? Be careful of what you read. It might not be true. And it doesn't take a blogger to make up nasty stories out of whole cloth. A 'reputable' news agency can do it all on their own.