A ‘Betoota Advocate’ Story About Tom Hanks In Quarantine Has Fooled The Rest of The World
The story has been taken as true by the lead White House reporter, amongst others.
Yesterday, in one of the wildest news stories to drop during a particularly wild year, beloved Hollywood leading man Tom Hanks was revealed to have caught coronavirus.
Hanks came down with the illness while shooting Baz Luhrmann’s new Elvis biopic on the Gold Coast, which is the kind of detail that you’d probably reject as too on the nose if it appeared in a movie.
Anyway, predictably, the internet lost its entire mind. The coronavirus epidemic has already been surreal and disruptive enough without one of the most wholesome actors in cinema getting diagnosed with the illness.
Adding to that chaos and confusion was a very funny satirical article, posted by The Betoota Advocate, Australia’s answer to The Onion. “Gold Coast Hospital Staff Roll In A Wilson Volleyball To Keep Tom Hanks Company In Quarantine” reads the headline, accompanied by a picture of a grinning Hanks holding his very own Wilson from Cast Away.
Gold Coast Hospital Staff Roll In A Volleyball To Keep Tom Hanks Company In Quarantine: https://t.co/2AL3ZVyB9r pic.twitter.com/tKZIQFYIki
— The Betoota Advocate (@BetootaAdvocate) March 12, 2020
Of course, like all articles from The Betoota Advocate, the story is made up. But that didn’t stop large swathes of the world from falling for it, and taking it as true — particularly Americans.
It wasn’t just that so many American citizens retweeted the story as true that rumour debunking site Snopes had to publish an article falsifying the claim. It was that the lead White House reporter from The New York Times, Maggie Haberman, took the obvious fib as being definitely true.
Which, particularly in the middle of a pandemic, when misinformation is running rife, is pretty scary.
not to put too fine a point on it, but at the height of a global pandemic, the lead white house reporter for the most important newspaper in america has retweeted a fake news story about tom hanks receiving wilson the volleyball in quarantine. please send help. pic.twitter.com/nhp4i7lU8z
— jord (@jordansarge) March 12, 2020
Remember folks: just because the world is scary out there, doesn’t mean it’s a time to stop checking your sources and making sure that the news that you’re spreading is definitely true.