An article titled "Bill O'Reilly In Critical Condition After Being Attacked By 'Tolerant' Liberals" published by fake-news-as-satire website The Last Line of Defense is trending on social platforms, indicating that many readers believe it is true. But it is fake news and it opens with this:
Bill O'Reilly was reportedly minding his own business at a bagel shop in New York City this morning when he was approached by two women and three men who said they were "disgusted" by his behavior towards women at Fox News. O'Reilly, who has never been afraid of anyone, turned and told the group to grow up and leave him alone. That's when the "tolerant" liberals got violent.
The story, of course, is playing off the real news that O'Reilly was fired from his hosting job at FOX News recently amid allegations that he sexually harassed females at the U.S. television channel. Lead Stories' Trendolizer tools detect early trending stories on social platforms. See the chart documenting this fake story's rise below.
The Resistance: The Last Line of Defense is a fake news website that carries following disclaimer on its about page:
DISCLAIMER: The Resistance may include information from sources that may or may not be reliable and facts that don't necessarily exist. All articles should be considered satirical and any and all quotes attributed to actual people complete and total baloney. Pictures that represent actual people should be considered altered and not in any way real.
The site also tends to include nonsensical phrases or insults hints in the list of "categories" under the article titles:
According to Buzzfeed the site was originally meant to troll conservatives with over the top satirical articles but now appears to be used as a 'source' by a large network of actual fake news sites (not related to the original creator) that all repost the same articles mentioning it as the source but not acknowlediging the satire disclaimer. This causes many people to believe the fake stories especially when they are being shared on social media where all context is removed and only the title, image and description remain. Sites in the network appear to include:
