New York Times Fooled Again

New York Times Publishes Fake North Korea News from Satirical Twitter Account

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Twitter/@DPRK_News

by PENNY STARR5 Jul 2017189

The New York Times issued a correction on Tuesday, admitting that it had reported as fact a Tweet posted on a satirical Twitter account that poses as the North Korean government.

“The New York Times mistook a tweet from the North Korea parody account DPRK_Newsas real,” the Gizmodo online blog reported.

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DPRK News Service @DPRK_News

Imbecilic Americans drunkenly fire missiles into East Sea of Korea, demonstrating near total ignorance of ballistic science.

7:36 PM - 4 Jul 2017

 
•  418418 Retweets
 
•  671671 likes

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The New York Times story that was published on Tuesday said:

On Wednesday morning, [Kim Jong-un] taunted the United States, saying the launch was a Fourth of July ‘gift’ to the Trump administration,” the Times reported and then quoted the fake account.

‘We should send them gifts once in a while to help break their boredom,” [Kim Jong-un] said, according to the North Korean state-run news agency.

The original New York Times story said: “On Twitter early Wednesday, the North Korean government belittled the joint exercise as ‘demonstrating near total ignorance of ballistic science,’” citing the fake Twitter account’s comment on the U.S. and South Korea responding to North Korea’s ballistic missile test with a military exercise along the Korean Peninsula’s east coast.

The New York Times article about the North Korean missile launch now includes the following correction:

Correction: July 4, 2017 

“Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article attributed incorrectly a Twitter statement to the North Korean government. The North Korean government did not belittle a joint American-South Korean military exercise as “demonstrating near total ignorance of ballistic science,” that statement was from the DPRK News Service, a parody Twitter account.”