The media fell all over themselves last week claiming that a 1,000 boat flotilla was about to sail from Turkey to blockade Israel. The event was to take place last Wednesday.
I was the only one who called it a hoax.
And I was right.
It was all fake news, based on the crazy claims of one guy, Volkan Okçu.
Not one news outlet checked for a shred of corroboration. They didn't ask him who else was involved, the names of any boats, who is organizing it, how they planned the logistics for such a large project. The media simply didn't do its most basic job, to check sources.
I looked at Volkan Okçu's tweets and saw that he had no idea what he was doing and then denied he was the organizer altogether.
And since then, not one media outlet admitted that they were fooled. They just let the story disappear.
Just because "everyone" reports something doesn't mean it is true.
The media is failing; they'd rather report (or, more often, repeat) what sounds juicy than make a phone call to check it out themselves.
I'm not saying this to brag. I spent no more than ten minutes researching this. But I am pointing out that this is a pattern we have seen a great deal during the Gaza war alone.
A large percentage of the news surrounding this Gaza war is as fake as this flotilla, and has just as little corroborating evidence. The sources for much of Gaza news are just as unreliable as Volkan Okçu is. The news comes from one doctor, one "witness," And the news media just runs with it.
They do it with casualty numbers. They did it with the Al Ahli hospital event. They did it with the Salah al-Din Road explosion.
Consistently, the media reports what it wants to be true, and if the editors like the story, they don't bother to fact-check it.
Just because "everyone says" something doesn't make it a fact. Very often, everyone jumping to repeat a story that sounds really good is the best evidence that it isn't real.
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