Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: September 10, 2017

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WAS THE STAR GUILTY OF PRINTING FAKE NEWS?

by Hazed

Last week I had a good laugh writing a story about dumb eclipse-viewers who had put sunscreen onto their eyeballs: http://www.ibgames.net/fednews/2017/170903/official07.html. I hope it made you laugh too. Silly, silly people!

This story was all over the media – everyone thought it was funny enough to report on. Fox News covered it, so did Forbes magazine.

The problem is that it may not be true. Oh dear. Fake news!

A report on snopes.com, the absolutely brilliant site which debunks news reports, emails and other viral content online, casts doubt on the accuracy of the story. It says that the story of idiots smearing their eyes with sun cream was first reported on California television news channel KRCR, in which they quoted a Nurse Practitioner Trish Patterson, who was herself quoting a colleague. All other reports simply copied this one, or copied one of the copies.

So the source for this was one person, who wasn’t seen on TV but was simply quoted. Snopes tried to contact her for verification but weren’t able to track her down, and they also contacted other eye clinics in the area who reported they had seen no eye damage at all related to the eclipse – let alone caused by sunscreen. Then they checked 13 other cities in the US, and drew a similar blank.

So it is more than possible that Nurse Patterson, or the colleague she was quoting, were just joking, or that there was miscommunication between the two or between Patterson and the TV reporter.

So in my delight at finding such an amusing story, I may well have printed fake news in the Star. Sorry, folks.

Source: http://www.snopes.com/sunscreen-eyes-eclipse/

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