November 14, 2023
It wasn’t too terribly long ago that the news media consisted of journalists who would do things like fact-check their stories, and then hand them to editors who would also review the stories for content and factual accuracy before publishing them. Those were the days.
I happened to see a story on my Yahoo feed today (and it’s still up, you can see it by clicking HERE) with the headline “Bill Cosby Hit With Massive Tax Lien While Sitting in Prison.” This was written by someone named Kelly Coffey-Behrens who, according to Walt Disney World’s on-line magazine, “has been reporting on a wide variety of topics for the last 12+ years and has written for several publications including BuzzFeed, NJ Digest Magazine, and The Blast.”
But back to the story. Cosby sitting in prison?? Maybe, I thought, the article was accurate, but the headline was mistaken? Nope. In the body of the article, Ms. Coffey-Behrens writes: “Bill Cosby can’t escape owing the government money, even though he is sitting in one of their [sic] prison facilities after they [sic] filed a tax lien against the disgraced actor.”
Ok, um…. he’s not sitting in prison. As just about everyone with a pulse knows, Cosby’s criminal convictions were reversed. He’s been out of prison since June of 2021.
I found that out by, you know, fact-checking. It’s something I do before clicking the “publish” button.