When I first saw the NewsWire-24.com submission, I thought someone had dragged me into the Matrix> “Is this the 24th iteration of News Wire? How many times must we review these people!” Then I realized that I was thinking about YourNewsWire.com, which we had already talked about and is definitely of dubious truthiness.
The equally dubious NewsWire-24 is — or was (more on that later) — based in the U.K. and is — or was — geared mostly towards that audience. We looked at two stories, as best we could:
This article has got to be one of the longest headlines I’ve read in a long time. Tarik Zahzah did indeed attempt to force his way onair at a Dutch TV station. This was reported by several world-wide media outlets, including BBC:
A threatening letter the man allegedly gave to staff, warning of bomb and cyber attacks if he was prevented from going on air, has been published on the NOS website (in Dutch).
Because plenty other major and regional news sites already picked up this story, NewsWire-24 needed to cram the important message on National News Channel has information from secret agencies around the world that the world needs to know bit into one eye-catching headline. They needed the extra punch to get traffic. NewsWire-24 also conveniently left out the fact that Tarik had a fake gun (because that’s not click-worthy at all!) and considering the “author” made 5 edits (at least) and failed to mention it simply adds fuel to the ClickBait fire.
+ Islamic State claims to have executed Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh by burning him in a cage
Not much need to punch-up this story when it involves such a brutal display of human depravity (complete with a video) of a human being burned alive. Instead, we’re treated to paragraph after paragraph of opinion, like this one:
This lunatic ideology needs an absolute shit storm thrown at them, not just little pussy airstrikes.
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As far as we can tell, the site had a single author and his most recent article was posted on April 2016. While two of the stories were true, they were peppered with unqualified opinion and relied heavily on ClickBait tactics for readership.
Expect a lot of opinion with NewsWire-24’s articles. But that’s not what you want from a news source. You can come up with your own opinions.