Maggie Haberman, New York Times award winning journalist, has been spreading fake news via Twitter with a post about Daniel Radcliffe having coronavirus.
Radcliffe, famous for his role as Harry Potter in the blockbuster series was said to have been confirmed as tested positive for COVID-19 by the "BBC" on Twitter. The account was a parody account with the handle @BBCNewsTonight. It linked back to an old BBC.com page that is not affiliated with the British news organization.
Haberman somehow won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2018 for her coverage of the Trump administration. One would expect more from a professional award-winning journalist such as fact checking, or getting secondary references.
Haberman also recently shared another viral story which turned out to be a hoax as well, the "moves like Bloomberg" video. The video showed people lethargically dancing to Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" with the word Bloomberg dubbed overtop. The dance video was itself a parody response to Pete Buttigieg's "Look out Pete" dance video. However, news of this being a parody missed the desk of Haberman as she simply shared the video with only a question mark for comment.
After critics pointed out to Haberman that the video she shared was a parody she attempted to claim it was shared to test the common person's journalistic skills, writing, "It's true, gone are the days of everyone reliably googling." Thanks for keeping us on our toes Maggie.
It's been a rough couple of months for the reputation of establishment journalist Haberman, but as long as we keep checking our own facts, we should be able to help the New York Times get their story straight.
What is just as tragic, however, is that the Pulitzer has also become meaningless, just as the Nobel Peace Prize came to be a target of ridicule and mirth ever since it was awarded to Kissinger and Le Duc Tho.