Australia Channel 7 hoaxed, said cricket player now a kazoo player - iMediaEthics

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Australia’s Channel 7 was duped by a fake news story claiming cricket player Cameron Bancroft joined the music band Tame Impala as a kazoo player, the Daily Mail Australia reported.

The fake news story originated in a 2018 post on satire website The Betoota Advocate. The Advocate itself flagged Channel 7’s error, posting on Instagram an image of the Channel 7 report. The image showed Channel 7 said in a graphic that Bancroft “recently returned to band ‘Tame Impala’ as the Kazoo player.”

iMediaEthics has written to Channel 7 to ask for more information about what went wrong.

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Once again the mainstream media feels entitled enough to repackage our investigative journalism and republish it as their own. @cbancroft4 rejoining @tame__impala was a story we exclusively broke last year and our reporters deserve the credit for their many hours of hard work. This is totally unacceptable.

A post shared by The Betoota Advocate (@betootaadvocate) on Jan 2, 2019 at 2:47am PST

According to News.com.au, “It’s not the first time a media organisation has fallen for one of Betoota’s brilliant but unbelievable tales. In 2014 The Today Show on Channel 9 reported a story that claimed a parking inspector had fined himself, then tried to appeal against his own decision.”

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Australia Channel 7 hoaxed, said cricket player now a kazoo player

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