MEDIA LOSER: New York Post This week, The New York Post was taught a painful and embarrassing lesson about the importance of fact-checking, when they excitedly published a story about a 22-year-old man who tweeted that he had taken out a second mortgage on his parents' home to buy more GameStop and AMC stock. The story, unsurprising to anyone who's ever actually gotten a mortgage loan, was absolute garbage. A Twitter user named @JackoWest_3 completely made it up. His silly prank tweet got a giant spotlight when Post reporter Mary K. Jacob messaged him to ask about his motivation for taking such a "big risk" but failed to request even the most basic verification of his unbelievable story. "JackoWest" not only claimed that he had taken out a mortgage on a home he does not own, but that he had obtained the loan "via a zoom call (without the camera on) with his hometown bank." Property laws vary from state to state, but nowhere in the U.S. can you legally take out a loan on property you do not own, and you definitely cannot take out such a loan over a phone call without a written document to confirm the agreement. Jacob's story was swiftly exposed as a fraud, the Post deleted it from their website, and Jacob protected her Twitter account. |