A quick study by Thoughtcat over a cup of tea and a biscuit has found that some journalists and news organisations are “a bit stupid”.
The BBC was forced into a humiliating climbdown today after finding that “a study” by some dodgy psychometric testing firm called AptiQuant, which found users of Internet Explorer were by definition borderline retarded, was a hoax.
The BBC report followed a report saying the same thing on the Daily Mail website, amongst others.
“I didn’t realise that some stories might not necessarily be based on facts,” said Dan Pratt, a technology reporter for the BBC.
“I thought I just had to read the Daily Mail and do a cut-and-paste job to generate content for the site.”
Meanwhile, Kevin Thick, the reporter responsible for the Daily Mail story, said: “I didn’t realise there had to be proper science behind these sorts of stories. I just found this study online and thought, Wow, this is interesting.
“The only problem with the story was that we couldn’t get in any immigrant-bashing, but we thought Hey, why not bash thick people instead for a change?”
The BBC has now replaced its original story with a story reporting that the original story was a hoax, while the Daily Mail has removed its story altogether.
Rumours that users of Internet Explorer are in fact a bit thick have yet to be confirmed, but another Thoughtcat study, this time over a cup of coffee and a doughnut, have found it to be “probably true”.
Filed under: thoughtcat, hoax, ie, internet, internet explorer, web
On yesterday’s C4 news, the film correspondent used the word ‘clerk’ but pronounced it ‘klerk’, not ‘klark’. If we had a cat, I would have kicked it. I’m now thinking of getting a cat just so I will have something to kick. Erm, sorry? You were saying?