Were cousins Tiffany Bates and Clifton Bridges from Taladega, Alabama arrested for having sex during a funeral ceremony and refusing to stop? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a Canadian entertainment website that makes a living by publishing fictional stories often involving weird crimes, bizarre sex acts or strange accidents. It is not real. The story recently went viral again after being posted to several Facebook pages but it is actually quite old already.
The story originated from an article published by World News Daily Report on October 5, 2017 titled "Cousins arrested after refusing to stop having sex during funeral ceremony" (archived here) which opened:
Talladega, AL | An Alabama couple has been arrested after refusing to stop having sexual intercourse during their grandmother's funeral ceremony.
Tiffany Bates, 31, and Clifton Bridges, 19, who are in fact close relatives, were apprehended by Talladega County Police after employees of the TalladegaFuneral Home complained that the couple was having "loud sex," "perturbing funeral services" as well as "scaring the guests."
Tiffany Bates and Clifton Bridges, who were both attending the funeral ceremony of their grandmother with other family members, decided to skip away from the funeral ceremony and indulge in sexual activities only meters away.
"We alerted Talladega police after several unsuccessful attempts to stop them from having sex on the property of the funeral home" explained Talladega Funeral Home employee, Jane Andrews.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Cousins arrested after refusing to stop having sex during funeral ceremony
Talladega, AL | An Alabama couple has been arrested after refusing to stop having sexual intercourse during their grandmother's funeral ceremony. Tiffany Bates, 31, and Clifton Bridges, 19, who are in fact close relatives, were apprehended by Talladega County Police after employees of the Talladega
In fact the image illustrating the story showed a Colorado couple accused of theft in 2014:
Couple Charged With Stealing Christmas Decorations Appears In Court
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4) - An 18-year-old man and his 42-year-old wife faced a judge Tuesday morning for allegedly stealing Christmas decorations in Colorado Springs. Police say Carrie Carley and Jeremy Lewallen swiped $2,000 worth of decorations. Carley is out on bond but Lewallen remains behind bars.
The website World News Daily Report is a well known satire website specialized in posting hoaxes and made up stories. The disclaimer on their website is pretty clear about that even though you have to scroll all the way down the page to find it:
World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.
It is run by Janick Murray-Hall and Olivier Legault, who also run the satirical Journal de Mourréal, a satirical site spoofing the (real) Journal de Montéal. Very often their stories feature an image showing a random crazy mugshot found in a mugshot gallery on the internet or on a stock photo website superimposed over a background of flashing police lights or crime scene tape.
Articles from the site are frequently copied (sometimes even months or years later) by varous fake news websites that omit the satire disclaimer and present the information as real.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes worldnewsdailyreport.com as:
A website that publishes hoaxes and made-up stories that are often widely shared and mistaken for news.
According to NewsGuard the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.
We wrote about worldnewsdailyreport.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
- Fake News: Man Did NOT Ejaculate in Boss' Coffee Every Day For Four Years
- Fake News: Man Did NOT Undergo $200,000 of Plastic Surgery to Look Like Jesus Christ
- Fake News: Homeless Man's Penis NOT Snapped In Half During Sex With Manhole Cover
- Fake News: Binge Eater NOT Hospitalized After Gobbling Up More Than 30 lbs of Urinal Deodorizers
- Fake News: Court Did NOT Order Tiger Woods To Take 137 Paternity Tests
