An article in Britain's Daily Mail back in February this year entitled "Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data" set the right-wing media alight. Maybe you remember it.
According to a Buzzfeed analysis, the article received more than 211,500 shares, likes, comments, or other interactions on social media, and another 159 stories repeated the original’s claims and linked back to it, including coverage from conservative news giants such as Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Caller, and National Review, as well as from climate skeptic blogs. These stories received about 540,800 shares or interactions.
Unfortunately, the original story was just not true, and the Daily Mail's and other commentators' reporting of it skewed the truth still further. At least 66 online articles taking issue with or refuting the original article have appeared since, but these have only garnered a little over a quarter of the social media shares of the original. For what it's worth, the online version of the Mail's article is now prefaced by a detailed apology for all the errors and the misleading and inaccurate reporting.
However, the damage is done, and the kind of people who frequent Breitbart and Fox News have had (or at least feel that they have had) their erroneous views vindicated and strengthened. The old saw about first impressions was never more true, and it seems that no amount of debunking, however definitive, is going to change that.
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