A KIRO-TV news story (here) on Friday, May 20, 2022, clarified how that viral story about $10 gas in Washington state got loose into the wild. Their story (edited here for length, and to stay within “fair use” guidelines):
” … [T]here are headlines – not quite correct – that say an Auburn gas station is preparing their digital displays at the pump for gas prices to hit $10 a gallon. KIRO7′s Deedee Sun looked into the facts behind the headlines.
“There is something unusual about the 76 gas station that’s family-owned by Small and Sons – it sells specialty racing fuel that’s 100 octane. Operations manager Jeff Small says … they did have to adjust the pump display when prices for the specialty gas topped $10 per gallon. However, he says national headlines … misrepresented the situation – and it went viral.
“’They completely spun it from what our conversation was,’ Small said. … ‘It was on Fox news, I guess, and that’s when everything really started rolling ….'”
Yeah. Now you know the what — special fuel used by racers and off-roaders — and who — the usual suspects: Fox News, and their gullible viewers.
Look, Fox isn’t a news network, it’s a propaganda network. And their viewers are, well, not exactly deep thinking intellectuals.
And you can’t believe much of anything on the internet outside of reputable news sources. Because anybody can post anything on the internet, but posting something doesn’t make it true. (This blog uses reputable news sites for its postings.) News from mainstream media sources is reported by professional journalists, and professionally edited, which makes it reliable.
Fox is run by professionals, too. But journalism isn’t what they do. Let’s always be clear about that.
They’re a political organization selling an ideology, candidates, and a biased point of view. They pay Tucker Carlson $10 million a year because he’s good at it, and lots of people buy what he’s selling (by paying cable fees, see story here; his bosses, the Murdochs, are in it for the profits). And they’re not fussy about factual accuracy (Carlson has admitted lying on his show, see story here). When real news organizations get something wrong, they print or air a correction.