20th Century Fox Apologizes For Purposely Spreading Fake News

• 20th Century Fox Apologizes For Purposely Spreading Fake News
  by James Holbrooks, http://www.activistpost.com/
  “In raising awareness for our films, we do our best to push the boundaries of traditional marketing in order to creatively express our message to consumers. In this case, we got it wrong.”
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  Those words were taken from an email sent to the New York Times by film industry behemoth 20th Century Fox. It was an apology from the corporation for its part in creating a network of “fake news” sites that published false stories as a marketing campaign for one of its films.
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  “We have reviewed our internal approval process and made appropriate changes,” Dan Berger, 20th Century Fox spokesman Dan Berger told the Times, “to ensure that every part of a campaign is elevated to and vetted by management in order to avoid this type of mistake in the future.”
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  On Monday, Fox had attempted to downplay the move. In a joint statement with production partner Regency Enterprises, the corporation justified the campaign by pointing out that the movie in question, A Cure for Wellness, is all about falsehood:
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  A Cure for Wellness is a movie about a ‘fake’ cure that makes people sicker. As part of this campaign, a ‘fake’ wellness site, healthandwellness.co, was created and we partnered with a fake news creator to publish fake news.
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  Unfortunately for Fox, few bought the line the movie giant was selling.
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  “This absolutely crosses the line,” Bonnie Patten, executive director of consumer watchdog TruthInAdvertising.org, told the Times. “Using a fake news site to lure consumers into buying movie tickets is basically a form of deceptive marketing.”
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  The five fake news sites created all had legitimate-sounding names: the Houston Leader, the Salt Lake City Guardian, NY Morning Post, the Indianapolis Gazette, and the Sacramento Dispatch. The sites published false stories about issues such as vaccines that vaguely tied in with A Cure for Wellness — but the stories contained real facts and data.
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  Variety, speaking with movie marketing veterans on the condition of anonymity, covered the story on Tuesday. Calling the campaign “monumentally stupid,” one expert went on to question Fox’s ethics.
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