Reuters Slays the Beast of Fake Ice Cream Memes for Joe
With the Biden administration, it must be hard to tell what is a joke and what isn’t a joke. That’s what we can discern by how the media is taking seriously their role as fact-checkers.
Here is a case in point…several people posted an obvious joke in the form of a meme that showed Joe Biden being lured away from a speech being given by Dr. Jill Biden.
The president was being lured by the music of an ice cream truck in the meme.
You can see the joke below.
When you hear that oh so familiar sound 🎵🎶 pic.twitter.com/8TQkDG912m
— @stevenvoiceover (@stevenvoiceover) September 10, 2021
But Reuters thought that it was necessary to get some of their fact-checkers on this story, so they dug deep to prove that there was no ice cream music and there was no ice cream during the First Lady’s speech.
Come on…this meme was obviously a joke. No one was claiming any breaking news on this story.
Reuters made sure that everyone knew this story was a fake. Notice the harsh label: “manipulated media” tags on the posts with a link to the real Reuters story below:
The original video was posted on C-SPAN (here) on Sept. 10, 2021, with the caption: “President Biden and first lady Jill Biden spoke at Washington, D.C.’s Brookland Middle School about the coronavirus pandemic and keeping children safe. The president urged parents to get their children vaccinated if they were eligible.”
At around the 01:35 mark, Biden can be seen walking out of the frame and returning a few seconds later, but no ice cream truck can be seen in the video nor can any music be heard.
This gets even more interesting when you see why Reuters finds a need to use fact-checkers. They claim to do this because of “real world harm.”
"Our choice of material to fact check is broad, and is based on the following criteria:
Could the material potentially cause real-world harm, if it is inaccurate?"
😬https://t.co/3fp6LwjDWs https://t.co/V9qbSpNI8E pic.twitter.com/hARpaJTvDG
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) August 1, 2022
Well, thank you, Reuters for stopping the “real world harm” that could have come if somebody believed Joe got distracted by the ice cream man.
How about this…the reason there is so much hubbub on this story is how believable it really could be.
If you want to know why supposedly reputable media organizations are fact checking internet memes, it's because even they find the fact that Joe Biden would wander off like this plausible.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 1, 2022
