August 26, 2013

In one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories, CNN's digital editor felt the need to explain that she did not pen a piece for The Onion justifying why they felt Miley Cyrus's twerking at the VMA's last night deserved such prominence on their website. Let Me Explain Why Miley Cyrus’ VMA Performance Was Our Top Story This Morning received 15,000 "likes" on Facebook.

It's perhaps a sign of the times that CNN's reputation as a "serious news organization" has fallen so low --perhaps rock bottom-- that so many people evidently thought the "editorial" was a legitimate justification for giving such wide play to Miley Cyrus shaking her ass around at some awards show.

via Epoch Times

A fake CNN opinion piece published by satirical news company The Onion drew a Twitter response from Meredith Artley, the managing director of CNN Digital.

The satirical Onion article in question, “Let Me Explain Why Miley Cyrus’ VMA Performance Was Our Top Story This Morning,” got more than 15,000 “likes” on Facebook, and was falsely penned by Artley.

“It’s a good question. And the answer is pretty simple. It was an attempt to get you to click on CNN.com so that we could drive up our web traffic, which in turn would allow us to increase our advertising revenue,” the Onion article wrote, in trying to explain why CNN led with a Miley Cyrus article about her controversial performance at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night.

“There was nothing, and I mean nothing, about that story that related to the important news of the day, the chronicling of significant human events, or the idea that journalism itself can be a force for positive change in the world. For Christ’s sake, there was an accompanying story with the headline ‘Miley’s Shocking Moves.’ In fact, putting that story front and center was actually doing, if anything, a disservice to the public,” wrote the Onion article before linking to the CNN piece at the bottom of the page.

cnn

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon