Comedy Central’s Daily Show gets Cheney-Google Earth “fake news” wrong
A “news story” that has been repeatedly featured on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” including an updated piece last night, has host John Stewart reporting that U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney had Google remove his private residence (at the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue of the D.C. capital) from their Google Earth maps.
At the recent SMX Local Mobile Conference this month, I had already asked Michael Jones, Chief Technologist for Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local, about the story that’s been circulating on the internet that Comedy Central picked up as “fact.” Any truth to it?
“There’s absolutely no truth to the Cheney thing. Its surreal.” Says Michael.
So the fake news gets its own fake news wrong. Then again, should we really have any expectations for fake news? Or is that the easy excuse to fall back on when the satire loses it teeth? What I think will be especially ironic is if Comedy Central’s parent company, Viacom, has my YouTube video clip removed on grounds of copyright infringement. (Here’s my advance response in case that does happen: “So what, Lie-a-com, somehow its alright for you to have the Daily Show steal clips from everyone else and call it satire, but its not alright for me or others to exercise the same fair use of your clips to report REAL news?”)
March 23rd, 2008 at 4:22 am
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