“It feels like all online media outlets have prioritized being First rather than Right, like it’s some sort of Scoop Race. As far as I know, we’ve never made it into print.
TDB: More than what this latest incident with the NYT reporting one of your tweets as news says about the state of fact-checking in the media today, what does it say about the state of reporting on North Korea?ĭerrick: “I think we need to make a distinction between print and online. “As for why this keeps happening, I’d attribute it to the pressure on journalists to produce more content, faster than ever before, a problem that’s only going to get worse as the news moves from paper and television to digital media.” The account is just a vehicle for dark comedy now. Since we were interviewed by the Washington Post last year, I no longer try to fool the press since the cat seems to be out of the bag.
“As for the Times, I was rather surprised because they seem to put more work into getting things right than most, but I’m guessing the pressure of breaking news, a major holiday, and laying off so many editors as they’ve done recently combined for a perfect storm. Patrick: “You can add USA Today twice in the past six months to that list, quoting us on Texas as a state ‘for its production of tacos and bumpkins,’ and calling John McCain an ‘infantile lunatic.’ “My own personal goal isn’t to ‘get’ any publications it’s to get into a flame war with a public figure (I have a list of targets). “To be honest, I have no idea why the media keeps falling for it at this point, outside of the obvious answer of ‘lack of fact-checking.’ Getting quoted in the media is very amusing, but it’s no longer the goal of the account and hasn’t been for nearly two years. But seriously, one Google search reveals us instantly. I firmly believe that if the NYT didn’t fire all their copy editors, this wouldn’t have happened. What was your reaction when you found out about this latest episode, and why does this keep happening?ĭerrick: “Our reactions to events such as this are initially congratulatory and then a bit incredulous.
#POPEHAT TWITTER LEGAL TV#
The Daily Beast: Media outlets that have reported on the DPRK News Service Twitter feed as actually speaking for the North Korean government: Newsweek, Fox News, BuzzFeed (twice), Washington Post, a Norwegian TV network, The Verge, Roll Call, and now The New York Times. The pair, Derrick (data analyst) and Patrick (attorney), prefer not to reveal their last names publicly, going by, variously, Patrick Popehat, Derrick Popehat, Patrick Nonwhite, and They shared their thoughts on this latest episode with The Daily Beast, via email. In fact, the DPRK News Service, which first tweeted in July 2009, is the work of a West Coast data analyst and a North Carolina attorney who also blog at, a self-described “group complaint about law, liberty, and leisure” started in 2004 by former federal prosecutor Ken White. The North Korean government did not belittle a joint American-South Korean military exercise as ‘demonstrating near total ignorance of ballistic science,’ that statement was from the DPRK News Service, a parody Twitter account.” “Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article attributed incorrectly a Twitter statement to the North Korean government. The line was removed from the article about 45 minutes later, and a correction followed roughly an hour after that:
As numerous other outlets have learned the hard way, the DPRK News Service is not actually the DPRK’s news service. The problem was, the North Korean government tweeted nothing of the sort.
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