You did no fact checking, and I must scream

Summary

I'm neither a journalist nor a professional fact checker but, the thing is, it's has never been easier to check basic facts. Yeah, sure, there's a world of misinformation out there, but it doesn't take much effort to determine if something is likely to be true. There are brilliant tools like reverse Image Search which give you a good indicator of when an image first appeared on the web, and whether it was published by a reputable source. You can use Google Books to check whether a quote is true. You can use social-media searches to easily check the origin of memes. There are vast archives of printed material to help you. The World Wide Web has a million sites which allow you to cross-reference any citations to see if they're spurious. Now, perhaps all that is a bit too much effort for someone casually doomscrolling and hitting "repost" for an instant dopamine hit. But it shouldn't be. And it certainly shouldn't be for people who write for trusted sources like newspapers. Recently, the beloved actor Patricia Routledge died. Several newspapers reposted a piece of viral slop which I had debunked a month previously. Let's go through the piece and see just how easy it is to prove false. Here's that "viral" story. I've kept to the parts which contain easily verifiable / falsifiable claims. Wikpedia says that her birthday was 17 February 1929. She would have turned 95 in 2024. Open up your calendar app. Scroll back to February 2024. What date was 17 February 2024? Saturday. Not Monday. Now, OK, maybe at 95 she's forgotten her birthday. What else does the rest of the piece say? In 1968, Patricia Routledge won Best Actress (Musical) at the Tony Awards - she was 39. I don't know if I'd consider appearing on Broadway as provincial stages. Keeping Up Appearances was first broadcast in 1990. Patricia was around 60, not 50, when she was cast. While she may have thought it would only be a small series - even though it was by the creator of Open All Hours and Last of the Summer Win...