https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/i-have-no-facts-and-i-must-scream/

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2025-10-05

You did no fact checking, and I must scream

fact check fake news newspapers quote Social Media * 9 comments * 
1,000 words * Viewed ~19,361 times

---------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

**"I'll be turning 95 this coming Monday. In my younger years, I was
often filled with worry -- worry that I wasn't quite good enough, that
no one would cast me again, that I wouldn't live up to my mother's
hopes. But these days begin in peace, and end in gratitude."**

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?

My life didn't quite take shape until my forties. I had worked
steadily -- on provincial stages, in radio plays, in West End
productions -- but I often felt adrift, as though I was searching for
a home within myself that I hadn't quite found.

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.

At 50, I accepted a television role that many would later associate
me with -- Hyacinth Bucket, of Keeping Up Appearances. I thought it
would be a small part in a little series. I never imagined that it
would take me into people's living rooms and hearts around the world.
And truthfully, that role taught me to accept my own quirks. It
healed something in me.

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
Wine - there's no way that being the lead character could be
described as a "small part". She wasn't a breakout character - she
was the star.

At 70, I returned to the Shakespearean stage -- something I once
believed I had aged out of. But this time, I had nothing to prove. I
stood on those boards with stillness, and audiences felt that. I was
no longer performing. I was simply being.

Wikipedia isn't always accurate, but it does list lots of her stage
work. She was working steadily on stage from 1999 - when she hit 70 -
but none of it Shakespeare.

I was able to do that fact checking in 10 minutes while laying in bed
waiting for the bathroom to become free. It wasn't onerous. It didn't
require subscriptions to professional journals. I didn't need a team
of fact-checkers. It took a bit of web-sleuthing and, dare I say it,
a smidgen of common sense.

And yet, a couple of newspapers ran with this utter drivel as though
it were the truth. The Independent published it as part of their
tribute - although they took the piece down after I emailed them.
Similarly The Express ran it without any basic fact-checking (and
didn't take it down after being contacted).

Both of them say their primary source is the "Jay Speak" blog.
There's nothing on that blog post to say that the author interviewed
Patricia Routledge. A quick check of the other posts on the site
don't make it obvious that it is a reputable source of exclusive
interviews with notable actors.

The date on that blog post is August 2nd, 2025. Is there anything
earlier? Typing a few of the phrases into a search engine found a
bunch of posts which pre-date it. The earliest I can find was this
Instagram post and this Facebook post both from the 24th of July - a
week early than the Jay Speaks post.

To be clear, I don't think Jay Speaks was deliberately trying to fool
journalists or hoax anyone. They simply saw an interesting looking
post and re-shared it. I also suspect the Facebook and Instagram
posts were copied from other sources - but I've been unable to find
anything definitive.

I would expect that professional journalists at well-established
newspapers to be able to call an actor's agent to fact-check a piece
before running it. If they can't, I would have thought they'd do a
cursory fact check.

But, no. I presume the rush to publish is so great that it over-rides
any sense of whether a piece should be accurate.

This is irresponsible. Last week saw the BBC air an outright lie on
Have I Got News For You. A professional TV company, with a budget for
lawyers, fact checkers, and researchers - and they just broadcast
easily disproven lies. Why? Maybe hubris, maybe laziness, maybe
deliberate rabble-rousing.

The media have comprehensively failed us. They will repeat any tawdry
nonsense as long as it keeps people clicking. It's up to us to defend
ourselves and our friends against this unending tsunami of low-grade
slurry.

I hope I've demonstrated that it takes almost no effort to perform a
basic fact check. It isn't a professional skill. It doesn't require
anything more than an Internet connection and a curious mind. If you
see something online, take a moment to check it before sharing it.

Stopping misinformation starts with you.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

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9 thoughts on "You did no fact checking, and I must scream"

 1. [64b07b31]

    [] Thayer

    @Edent infuriating!! I actually read that story and to comfort
    from it. Annoying to know it's fake news!

    Reply | Reply to original comment on mastodon.social 2025-10-05
    12:45

 2. [9d79fea4]

    [] Mia

    @Thayer @Edent same! Otoh, I've never seen her show so didn't
    particularly care that it was by her. It's so fcked up that
    someone would fake it

    Reply | Reply to original comment on hcommons.social 2025-10-05
    12:56

 3. [] Tim Ward  #FBPE

    @blog "I would expect that professional journalists at
    well-established newspapers to be able to call"

    There's a very, very, VERY good reason why some lazy journos
    don't make a phone call to check a story.

    It's because they might discover that actually they don't have a
    story.

    Then they'd have to start all over again, find another story, and
    do some actual WORK.

    Reply | Reply to original comment on c.im 2025-10-05 13:26

 4. [dddc4019]

    Hanan Cohen

    "I was able to do that fact checking in 10 minutes while laying
    in bed". XKCD 386 is a nice piece of anachronism.

    Reply 2025-10-05 19:05

 5. [c9756faa]

    Jonathan Smith

    I saw that yesterday and took it at face value. Who could be
    arsed faking something so meh?

    Reply 2025-10-05 21:00

 6. [a2161e3a]

    [] flng

    @blog I wholheartedly agree - with the small caveat that proving
    truth doesn't win many people in a political context - I guess
    some heart or fire is needed too.

    That doesn't mean I want crap quality news reporting, though.

    Reply | Reply to original comment on mastodon.social 2025-10-05
    22:33

 7. [16a5e8a0]

    [] Andy Mabbett

    One of the reasons for such shoddy journalism is the pressure to
    increase output, for example:

    https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/digital-journalism/
    reach-page-views/

    Reply 2025-10-05 22:37

 8. [] news.ycombinator.com

    You did no fact checking, and I must scream | Hacker News

    Reply | Reply to original comment on news.ycombinator.com
    2025-10-17 15:09

 9. [f04e8d2d]

    [] Timothy (TRiG)

    Another interesting example was the opening of Entrecote Dublin
    steak house to much fanfare (and newspapers uncritically printing
    press releases as journalism) before a food blogger (Lisa Cope)
    revealed that it was had no connection to the famous French
    restaurants of that name.

    Reply 2025-10-17 19:28

10. [svg]

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