A story, which stated a Knoxville man was on the run for creating a real-life human centipede was circulated online on Friday, August 31. But, later it was revealed that the story was posted on a fake USA Today website, including other fake contents.
Even though it was hard to prove the authenticity of the story, as it appeared like original, the URL of the story showed that the site address is usatoday-go.com, not usatoday.com. The fake news website is the perfect replica of the original site but if people read the series covered by the fake platform, they will get to know that all these stories are also false.
As per the WBIR, after receiving several reports from curious people who wanted to know whether human centipede story was true or not, the Knoxville Police Department was informed and soon Deputy Chief Gary Holliday clearly stated that the news, which stated that a man is accused of a disgusting crime based on a movie called Human Centipede, was fake.
Nick Geidner, who is an associate professor of Journalism at the University of Tennessee said, "It is sensational, and it is sort of weird, and it does deal with our safety, so it hits all those things that make us want to share information. We're sharing it, in part, because we want to protect other people and we want to inform other people and it's just a crazy story."
While stating that people should be more careful about sharing articles on online platforms, Geidner added, "The first thing to look at is the address of what you're linking to. That one is close to USA Today, but it's not USA Today. You want to read the whole story before you share anything. All those source credibility ques that we look, you should look at and think sceptically of anything you are going to share."
