Celebrity death reporting on the Internet can be tricky. USA Today learned that lesson the hard way on Tuesday.
The newspaper tweeted out that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy had died, only to quickly learn that it had been fooled by a fake Twitter account.
Celeb death hoaxes aren’t terribly new in the social media age, but it’s rare that they’re perpetuated by a major news outlet.
The hoax seems to have originated from a fake Twitter account using the name and logo of the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house, which counts McCarthy among its authors.
USA Today ran with the news, then quickly followed up with another tweet that its reporters “are looking into this report to verify its authenticity.” Read more…
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