Type Fake news Founder(s) Jestin Coler Launched 2013 | Format Website Editor-in-chief Nigel Covington | |
Publisher Jestin Coler AKA Allen Montgomery | ||
National Report is a fake news website which posts fictional articles related to world events. It is described by Snopes.com as a fake news site, by FactCheck.org as a satirical site and by Caitlin Dewey of the Washington Post as part of a fake-news industry, making profits from "duping gullible Internet users with deceptively newsy headlines." The National Report describes itself as a "news and political satire web publication" and provides a disclaimer that "all news articles contained within National Report are fiction". The disclaimer, however, is not printed on the main page, which instead claims that the website is "America's #1 Independent News Source."
Contents
Stories from the National Report have been taken seriously by third parties such as Fox News Channel, and the site drew criticism in October 2014 for running a series of fake stories about Ebola outbreaks in the United States, including the false report that the town of Purdon, Texas, has been quarantined after an outbreak. The story led to a traffic spike of two million unique visitors, and although the story was debunked by other websites, the original National Report story received six times as many "shares" on social media sites as the debunking stories did.
History
In February 2013, National Report was registered as a site. Paul Horner was the publication's lead writer; his employment began shortly after National Report went online. He said that he left National Report in 2014. Jestin Coler has written for the site under the pseudonym "Allen Montgomery".
In 2014, a Facebook interface experiment included the site on a list of those whose stories were flagged as "satire" when appearing on the social network. Writing at the time, Craig Silverman of emergent.info saw National Report as one of several websites which were "not driven by trying to do comedy or satire, but by what kind of fake stuff can we spin up to get shares that earn us money", with particularly widely spread hoax stories capable of earning thousands of dollars per day from on-site advertising.
Disclaimer
The National Report carries a disclaimer identifying its content as satire and fake news, but there was no prominent link to this page until late December 2014. Numerous articles referring to National Report stories stated that National Report's disclaimer had been removed.
List of serious interpretations
Several hoax National Report stories have been mistakenly reported as fact by media outlets.
A report that Arizona governor Jan Brewer intended to introduce mandatory gay-to-straight conversion courses into the state's public school system. A spokesman for the governor called the fake article 'vile' and said 'its authors should be ashamed.' Brewer has been a target of gay rights activists because of her efforts to strip same-sex partners of government benefits, and for her stance on making it harder for gay couples to adopt children.
One article, at the time of the closure of some US monuments including the World War II memorial in Washington, DC, during a budget dispute, fooled researchers at Fox News Channel into reporting that the President had announced his intention to spend his own money to keep a Muslim museum open during a government shutdown.
A report published on November 2, 2013 claiming a fictitious Assam Rape Festival created a furor in Indian national and local media. Several newspapers and blogs reported the same. A police probe in India showed the story originated from Uganda.