Friday, January 28, 2011

Bleacher Report Duped



Media sources with real credibility have reported that Jeff Fisher's agent says it is "highly unlikely" that Jeff Fisher will be the Eagles next defensive coordinator. But leave it to Bleacher Report to find an obscure (likely fake), claim it's the guy from another Twitter account who is for whatever reason using a different account to say that Fisher agreed to a 3-year, $15M contract. And then put up that suspicious, unverified on their web site as breaking news.

Bleacher Report, ladies and gentlemen! Need I say more?

Update: It appears as if Bleacher Report finally realized that they had been duped and they have offered a retraction of sorts. People need to start checking sources because apparently the guy RT'd through a fake @EaglesLnsider account (on Twitter lower a lower case "L" and upper case "I" look exactly the same, so the guy replaced the first I in "Insider" with a "L.") It's a good trick......only it's been done twice in the past month. Someone used @SL_JonHeyman (capitalization changed for illustrative purposes) to make people think the Phillies traded for Zach Greinke (which spread across the entire internet), and hours before Cliffmas arrived, a fake @KenRosenthai account reported a Cliff Lee signing (again catching on majorly with a lot of people). Does it hurt to try and verify reports? Or at the very least check to make sure the Twitter account is not a fake? A simple click of the profile showing lack of number of tweets easily proves it's a fake.

Alas, Bleacher Report may have deleted the original and offered a retraction, but I still got screengrabs of the originals! And they are staying up here. Think of them as a recovered special treasure.

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