Another day, another fake news story from The Resistance: The Last Line of Defense. This time it is titled "BREAKING: Fox News Just Fired Their Most Controversial Anchor" and it claims Shepard Smith was fired by Rupert Murdoch himself. The article opens:
Fox News has finally had enough of one of their most controversial anchors. After speaking out against President Trump on multiple occasions and embarrassing the network publicly, Shep Smith has been given his walking papers.
Rupert Murdoch, head honcho at Fox, told insiders that Shep was let go for his obvious disrespect for President Trump, his unscripted outbursts on live television and allowing his personal life to interfere with his television persona:
This is followed by a fake quote from Rupert Murdoch:
"Shep has shown that he's not the kind of anchor suitable for the Fox News audience. While we respect his right to have a liberal opinion and his right to choose his sexual orientation, our viewers don't need to be exposed to it. Maybe Shep can go work for MSNBC and get a show with Rachel Maddow."
How do we know this news is fake, even though several other sites are reporting the same 'news'?
Simple: "The Resistance: The Last Line of Defense" is a fake news website that carries following disclaimer on its about page:
DISCLAIMER: The Resistance may include information from sources that may or may not be reliable and facts that don't necessarily exist. All articles should be considered satirical and any and all quotes attributed to actual people complete and total baloney. Pictures that represent actual people should be considered altered and not in any way real.
The site also tends to include nonsensical phrases or insults hints in the list of "categories" under the article titles:
They did that again on this article, where it says Free Head Examinations, Loose Meat Hoagies, WMSWM in that location.
The site appears to be part of a larger network of sites that all seem to repost the same articles mentioning it as the source but not acknowlediging the satire disclaimer. This causes many people to believe the fake stories especially when they are being shared on social media where even more context is removed and only the title, image and description remain. Sites in the network appear to include:
- American News
- Newsbreakshere
- Amposts
- Conservative Info corner
- Conservative Army
- Open Magazines
- True Trumpers
- Blue Vision News
- Conservative Flash News
- Red Country
- Newsfeedhunter
All that didn't seem to matter to the many people who are sharing the story around as you can see in the Trendolizer graph at the end of this article. If you notice anyone spreading the rumor around you can help by pointing them to this article here because nobody likes being duped by fake news.
