Read on Twitter
HOW FAKE NEWS SPREADS.
On Weds night, at 9.49pm, @Telegraph tweeted this. https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1293650828180574208
On Weds night, at 9.49pm, @Telegraph tweeted this. https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1293650828180574208
It quoted Gavin Williamson:
"Mr Williamson said that, if teachers' grades were used, "we would have seen them shoot up, which would devalue the results for the class of 2020 and would clearly not be fair on the classes of 2019 and 2021", ...
"Mr Williamson said that, if teachers' grades were used, "we would have seen them shoot up, which would devalue the results for the class of 2020 and would clearly not be fair on the classes of 2019 and 2021", ...
... adding: "But worse than that, it would mean that students this year would lose out twice over, both in their education and their future prospects."
Very shortly after, at 10.12pm, @econbartleby quote-tweeted the Telegraph, paraphrasing it as this: .
https://twitter.com/econbartleby/status/1293656692157296643
It's obviously a paraphrase, not a direct quote, and @econbartleby later said he obviously meant it as a joke.
https://twitter.com/econbartleby/status/1293656692157296643
It's obviously a paraphrase, not a direct quote, and @econbartleby later said he obviously meant it as a joke.
It's clearly not what GW said - he actually said the opposite. He said that he is worried that if CAGs are accepted, the class of 2020 will end up *underpromoted* because employers won't take the grades as seriously as the exam grades from other cohorts.
OK so @econbartleby meant it as a joke and phrased it as a paraphrase, not a direct quote. But plenty of others have taken it seriously, AND added quote marks. This, from @davidschneider , had more retweets than the original paraphrase. https://twitter.com/davidschneider/status/1293809396972228608
All day, I saw the quote popping up in my timeline. You may not like Gavin Williamson and you may be upset about exam results and you may think he deserves everything he is getting, but if you care about Twitter misinformation, you should know he did not say this.
I do agree that it seemed to me obvious that the paraphrase was a joke. Unfortunately it was not obvious to several thousand people who retweeted the direct quote version and were outraged at its callousness.
Nor was it obvious to Piers Morgan. https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/1293826536571916288
Indeed, when someone pointed out to Adam Boulton that it was a joke, he doubled down, and perhaps understandably asserted that if an Economist journalist said it, it must be true. https://twitter.com/adamboultonSKY/status/1294038274307235841
Finally, it didn't seem like a joke to @econbartleby's own colleague at @TheEconomist , @adwooldridge, who has also recommended it for 'Quote of the Year'.
Here is a nice article from @TheEconomist about the causes of fake news. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/04/05/fake-news-flourishes-when-partisan-audiences-crave-it
