Who’s responsible for the fake U.S. Chamber of Commerce site? Update: fake news conference video

So the United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) puts forward the denier’s skeptic’s opinion that having the Environmental Protection Agency regulate so-called greenhouse gasses is bad for the economic strength of the United States. Some companies quit the Chamber. Now we’ve got fake USCC Web sites and news releases “reversing” their opinion?

The fake Web page that has the release is exactly like the Chambers real site, but the URL is totally wrong. Click on the graphic below to see the full page.

If you complain about “false information” being spread by Fox News and blogs, what say you about mainstream media outlets that don’t do any fact checking at all and fall – quickly – for fake Web pages with press releases? From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air

That can’t be said for news outlets like the Washington Post, New York Times, CNBC, and especially Reuters, who originally reported on it. That kind of an about-face by the USCC should have set warning bells ringing in newsrooms. What was the likelihood of the USCC not only backing cap-and-trade but also demanding a new carbon tax on top of it? And how long would it have taken for someone to look at the USCC website to confirm the information? Even the slowest of connections would take no longer than a minute for the page to load – or to notice the difference in the URLs.

At the conference this weekend, one reporter noted that bloggers rarely pick up a phone to verify information, a criticism with more than a little truth to it. Unfortunately, that appears to apply to reporters as well.

fake-uscc-site

Update: Now a fake news conference?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYGcIhNGSIY

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

3 Comments

  1. Dimsdale on October 19, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    "Reporters" that call blogs "a sewer pit of journalism" (Tom Friedman) should take care to make sure their own glass houses are in order.   They are supposed to be the professionals, but more and more, they are looking more ameteurish than college newspapers.   Isn't the perceived crime worse when you are being paid to do the job?

     

    Case in point: Palestra.net (now Uwire.com) reported on several egregious and easily verifiable examples of voter fraud in Ohio and New Mexico, if memory serves me correctly.  Stories that the mainstream "experts" didn't even bother to cover, and don't to this day.  Need we bring up the ACORN story?

     

    I worry more about the stories they refuse to cover due to bias than the ones they are too stupid and unprofessional to verify.



  2. Dimsdale on October 19, 2009 at 1:35 pm

    BTW, I prefer to be called an AGW skeptic rather than denier.  Denier implies that the contested data is actually factually correct, and is thus inaccurate.



    • Steve McGough on October 19, 2009 at 3:00 pm

      You're right Dims, and I'll correct that now. I'll also fix the monstrous thumbnail on the home page…



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