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The Daily News: All Earthquakes Look the Same

011310dailynewsfail.jpg

[UPDATE BELOW]
In the rush to report on Haiti's catastrophic earthquake, it's understandable that the media is going to make mistakes. Heck, this photo from the 2008 Chinese earthquake, which the Daily News included in a slideshow of 54 images from Haiti today, was probably tossed in by some hapless, unpaid photo intern. An intern who must be destroyed. Hat tip to the NY Post editor who altruistically pointed this out to us; judging by today's edition, we're surprised to see they're even paying attention to this. And speaking of fake Haiti earthquake photos, you also need to watch out for fake Haiti earthquake charities.

The Internet Storm Center reports that some people are already registering domain names related to the Haitian earthquake, in what might be the first step toward setting up a scam website. "Whenever there is a major natural disaster, be it home or abroad, there are two things you can count on. The first is the generosity of Americans to donate time and money to help victims, and the second is the appearance of poorly run and in some cases fraudulent charities," said Art Taylor of the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance. Their website has a guide on how to give without giving to a scam, and we listed some earlier (including some local fundraisers starting tonight).

UPDATE: Scott Cohen, Executive Editor of the Daily News, sent us this statement: "Three different photo agencies sent that image out last night labeled as a Jan. 12 shot from Haiti. Obviously, we removed it from our pages as soon as we learned of their error. As you wrote, it was one of dozens of photographs we posted overnight, while some of our so-called competitors were either sleeping or ignoring the story."

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Comments [rss]

  • S.K.

    Haiti can't afford to exist independently. Some country should adopt it, and give it independence after a few decades.

  • potsmoker

    lets admit every haitian on humantiarian grounds,

    import thier booty shaking dances too.

  • EastRiver

    Online offerings from the newspapers doesn't seem to receive much fact checking. Yesterday the New York Times soccer blog reported that Gillette Stadium hosted World Cup matches in 1994. The stadium opening in 2002.

  • chuzzlewit

    the photo says "credits: via twitter" - that's it? some basket case tweets in a photo and they shovel it into the news? that's actually pretty fuckin scary.

  • rides on farts

    CNN has been running a "What We're Hearing" story on their front page today that is basically a twitter feed. Scary, indeed.

  • JonnyLeather

    I'm not so sure NY Post has much leverage to call out The Daily News on this one. From the looks of this morning's Post nothing even happened in Haiti.

    http://www.nypress.com/blog-5652-something-devastating-happened.html

  • John Del Signore

    That's a good point; I added your link, thanks.

  • JonnyLeather

    thanks John

  • Guest

    i see... it's the paper wars.

  • Gothamist_Cynic

    That's a pretty distasteful title.

  • Mark

    The Human Fund.

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