A fake CNN opinion piece published by satirical news company The Onion drew a Twitter response from Meredith Artley, the managing director of CNN Digital.
The satirical Onion article in question, “Let Me Explain Why Miley Cyrus’ VMA Performance Was Our Top Story This Morning,” got more than 15,000 “likes” on Facebook, and was falsely penned by Artley.
“It’s a good question. And the answer is pretty simple. It was an attempt to get you to click on CNN.com so that we could drive up our web traffic, which in turn would allow us to increase our advertising revenue,” the Onion article wrote, in trying to explain why CNN led with a Miley Cyrus article about her controversial performance at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night.
“There was nothing, and I mean nothing, about that story that related to the important news of the day, the chronicling of significant human events, or the idea that journalism itself can be a force for positive change in the world. For Christ’s sake, there was an accompanying story with the headline ‘Miley’s Shocking Moves.’ In fact, putting that story front and center was actually doing, if anything, a disservice to the public,” wrote the Onion article before linking to the CNN piece at the bottom of the page.
Artley went on Twitter and responded to the Onion article. “To clarify, I did not write this ... But I accept all compliments and deny all accusations. Tx for the page views,” she wrote.
“@socialnerdia @TheOnion I’m reading it as more of a joke than something to call the legal team about,” she wrote, adding that she “is real. Although I wish they would have used a better headshot.”
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