By now, you’ve probably heard about the Obamacare coverage mishaps, courtesy of CNN and Fox News. Both news outlets briefly reported President Obama’s health care initiative as being struck down by the Supreme Court, something that clearly did not happen. If you’d like to see how people are (over)reacting the news, just hang on Twitter for a little while and follow this particular hashtag.
You won’t be disappointed by the exchanges, no matter how misguided they are.
It’s clear the rush to be first in the world of news trumps accuracy, and because each station’s screw-up was so noticeable, it became something of a talking point, at least where CNN is involved. While a slanted report that goes against the Obama administration is to be expected for Fox News, the fact that CNN was so thoroughly mistaken is a major talking point, perhaps all the way to the halls of CNN itself.
While Fox News is also to blame here, the fallout is being coined as CNN gives Obama his “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment, something that was immortalized by yfrog.com users. So much so, in fact, it lead to the creation of a mock-up of the famous image, but instead of Truman holding up the newspaper, which leads this article, the image has been doctored to feature Obama, an iPad, and CNN’s unfortunate blunder of a headline:
Needless to say, the image has gone viral:
A modern-day “Dewey Beats Truman’ http://t.co/sT2qRIwy
RT @AmandaBeadle: CNN’s “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment (via @EliClifton) http://t.co/EDjRgfGU
(image)
And the iconic photo[shop] to match? http://t.co/oOMRwmO8 MT @dgardner: CNN just delivered the Twitter generation’s “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
Everyone, please. Until Obama holds up an iPad with a CNN screenshot on it, this isn’t Dewey Defeats Truman. It’s just an epic screwup.
Killjoy.