Associated Content Attacked by Ham Sandwich; Bloody Sock is the Outcome

The week that was April 23rd-29th, 2007...dates that will live in infamy!

It all started, innocently enough with a fake news story about a ham sandwich submitted into the real news section. Somehow, the story got to the FOX news people and next thing you know it's featured on 'Fox and Friends' Tuesday. The snowball begins to roll down the hill; the media feeding frenzy is on.

But not enough heat has been put on FOX. Perhaps nobody really has faith in their news as 100% factual, and I can't disagree with you. I think that speaks for all of the network media, it is about ratings after all. I guess maybe they don't have to fact check.

The issue has hit a sore spot among the site's content producers as well. The writers here have a lot of pride in their work, and they probably feel like their good reputation has been ruined thanks to one person's mistake. But I think we get a little over-sensitive. If they want to compare the website to The Onion so be it. It might not be the best thing for the legitimate news writers but for the satirists our stock just jumped.

Let's be honest about the news section of this site, how many of those reports are first-hand ones? I am not trying to put down people who write the news articles. Most are well-written and flow well but they aren't scoops. Unless the story is local, then most of the time, a news source will have the report already up online before anyone here puts a story up about it. This site isn't in the news business; it is in the entertainment business.

I think that's where we lose focus on things. We have to either entertain, or get people's attention in some way. I say 'it's all about content' a lot but writing is also for entertaining, we are storytellers after all. We do not want to fool people though, and unfortunately we don't want to pass off real news as fake news. I am not saying we should go down that route.