Gawker: misinterpreting the news so you don't have to.

Here's the latest example of lazy journalism leading to blatant inaccuracies and falsehoods in the blogosphere, compliments of our friends at Gawker -- and their incessant crusade to make Mitt Romney look stupid (as if he's not doing a fine job of that on his own): "Paul Ryan's Cute Nickname For His Floundering Running Mate: 'The Stench' (UPDATE)."

That's a headline dreamed up by Gawker blogster Cord Jefferson, which currently is featured on the Gawker website and was beamed out to its 209,000 Facebook followers.

It's that pesky "(UPDATE)" part that's so perplexing -- you see, Ryan doesn't actually call Romney "the stench." Not even a little bit. At all. Yet, it's that claim that's the basis for Jefferson's entire post -- which he ultimately admits is complete bullshit.

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Drew Magary's Facebook page

This is Gawker blogger Drew Magary. He thinks Mike Bloomberg's proposed ban on big-boy cups for sugary beverages is no big deal because sometimes we "like being nannied." Sorry, Drew -- not all of us like being treated like children.

As the rest of us rolled our eyes in disgust Wednesday when Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced his proposal to ban big-kid cups for sugary drinks like soda, Gawker blogger Drew Magary penned a lengthy "rant" about how upset he is that the media isn't applauding Bloomberg for treating adults like babies. He thinks the mayor's proposed ban is just fine because we elected him, and America's not really a free country, and sometimes we "like being nannied," and "fatsos" need the government to get them to stop being fatsos, and a collection of other asinine reasons why it's Bloomberg's job to play food cop.

And if you're pissed off the mayor thinks it's his job to tell you what to eat, according to Magary, you're a "pussy."

While Magary may want to be treated like a child and "nannied" by a 70-year-old billionaire, most of us don't -- and there's a reason for that: we're fucking adults.

That's right, the majority of us who are offended that the mayor of New York thinks it's his job to tell us how to eat are grown ups, which means most of us go to work everyday, pay our bills, and are responsible enough to know that occasionally chugging 64 ounces of what essentially is pure sugar (out of a single container (gasp!)) isn't the end of the world as long as we balance it out with, say, a brisk walk and a salad for dinner instead of a Big Mac (a concept that's illustrated wonderfully in the weight-loss book Chubster).

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Gawker's "mole" at Fox News, Joe Muto, was outed less than 24 hours after first publishing a few insignificant yarns from inside the cable news network's newsroom -- and now he claims on Twitter to be in the midst of a "media firestorm."

The only interview he's actually given -- which he pimps on Twitter as being an "exclusive" -- was to CNN's Howard Kurtz -- and we hate to break it you, Fox News foes, but he comes across as a bit of a douchebag (see the video embedded above), inspired more by dollar signs (and a possible book deal) than with exposing any right-wing bias many claim the Roger Ailes-run network has.

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Well, that didn't take long -- Fox News has identified the "mole" Gawker had in its newsroom: according to the network, the culprit is a man named Joe Muto.

A Fox News spokesperson sent us the following email:

"Joe Muto is fired effective April 12. Once the network determined that Mr. Muto was the main culprit in less than 24 hours, he was suspended late today while we pursued concurrent avenues. We are continuing to explore legal recourse against Mr. Muto and possibly others."

Gawker, as we mentioned yesterday, sucks at anonymity, which is why -- within 24 hours -- we know the identity of its "anonymous" source in the Fox newsroom.

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The thing about anonymity is that to remain anonymous it helps when people don't know who you are -- a concept that the blogsters over at Gawker apparently have a hard time understanding.

Gawker has a bit of a history when it comes to promising anonymity to people who contribute fantastical, often reckless stories to its site -- only to have the identity of these sources outed shortly after. The latest "anonymous" Gawker blogger who's likely to soon lose his anonymity is a "mole" inside Fox News who's using his job at the network to tell unflattering, but ultimately irrelevant, stories -- and it took Fox less than 24 hours to figure out who he is (according to Fox, anyway).

Fox confirms to the Voice what Mediaite -- which actually asked readers to guess how long it would take for the mole to be outed -- reported earlier: that the mole has been made and the cable news behemoth is "exploring legal options."  

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Yesterday, Runnin' Scared wrote about a series of photos chronicling a group of neo-Nazis in Greenpoint.

As one would expect, the photos, which Gawker broke, have gone viral, and were featured in the Daily Mail, prompting the Daily News to ask: Are there Nazis in Brooklyn?

Runnin' Scared has recently learned that these polemic pics are at least two years old.

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In the age of publishing directly to the Internet, often with little or no editing, sometimes embarrassing things end up underneath the logo of otherwise legitimate news organizations. Though where the Washington Times fits on the legitimacy scale is arguable (see: Sun Myung Moon), a post on their website today claimed Anthony Weiner secretly converted to Islam; the ridiculousness has since been pulled from the official site, though of course it lives on because this is the Internet. What role did editors have in such an egregiously untrue piece? (Hint: It wasn't none!) Find out inside Press Clips, our daily media column, plus bits and pieces on AOL, the state of journalism (!), and the latest in the Grantland vs. Deadspin battle.

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A secretive story has been bubbling in Silicon Valley this week, in which the PR firm Burson-Marsteller pitched anti-Google articles to national newspapers on behalf of some unnamed client. Google, they claimed, has privacy issues that the American people should know about -- but it was far from that pure. The PR company went to journalists and bloggers, even telling them that they would do the work; all they needed was someone's name to stick up top. USA Today, The Huffington Post, and Politico were all potential targets. Today, Dan Lyons of the Daily Beast reports that it was all on behalf of Facebook, a company that, as we all know well, has some privacy issues of its own. Details about the brewing scandal inside Press Clips, our daily media column.

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Late last week Gawker posted a story outing correspondence between users thought to be "leadership" members of the internet hacker and activist group Anonymous, one previously referred to in the press as non-hierarchical. In the chat logs, a clear chief can be seen giving orders to his fellow "anons" as the small group takes credit for hacking the emails of computer security firm HBGary and ravaging the security of Gawker.com back in December. The chat logs have since been revealed in full, leaked to the press by both dissident Anonymous members and journalists working to learn more about the group. With its profile raised amid fervent support for Julian Assange's WikiLeaks and rebellion in the Middle East, plus battles with the Westboro Church and appearances on The Colbert Report, Anonymous is having something of a moment. But for a secretive group working illegally, that may not be a good thing.

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James O'Keefe, the same Republican operative/twerp/'investigative journalist' behind such secret stings as the undercover ACORN videos (yeah, the pimp costume guy) and the attempted tapping of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu's phones went at it again today with a new video project. This time, O'Keefe got NPR executive Ron Schiller to say disparaging things about the Tea Party and Republicans by pretending to be from a group of radical Muslims with money to donate. But O'Keefe's latest stunt, in turn, got Republicans to speak badly of Muslims. Everyone wins! (Loses?) More inside Press Clips, our daily media round-up.

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