Fact Check: USA Today and CNN are clickbait sites pretending to be factual news

CNN faked a protest photo in an article in 2016

The claim: USA Today and CNN are unbiased factual news sites

For some reason, despite sharing articles worthy of supermarket tabloids, or faking a protest photo to get higher article views, people continue to believe that USA Today and CNN are real news sites.

Sure, CNN has been busted several times for completely fake news coverage, and USA Today is buying up all the local newspapers across the country in an effort to generate more revenue through clickbait and profiting off tasteless minute-by-minute coverage of dead celebrities.

But after all of these years of consistently being fooled by USA Today and CNN, surely they'd be required to put some sort of disclaimer on their sites if they're not reporting factual news, right?

Newspapers and Cable News aren't required to tell the truth

News media in fact is under no obligation to present the truth when reporting news, and in fact intentionally misleads viewers/readers to get better viewership, leading to higher paying sponsors.

In fact, the news organizations only need to prevent from committing libel or slander directed towards a person or organization, and they're absolutely within the confines of the law.

In fact, the FCC has even made clear that they will only step in if the fake news is going to cause "immediate harm". Otherwise, they're powerless to force news organizations to tell the truth.

Sadly, you had to learn this from a satire site

We often joke that we're more honest than CNN or other major news outlets. This is in fact true. Unlike major news outlets, we actually tell you when our articles are satire (which is 99% of the time). Ironically, CNN has even confirmed that 75% of Americans can't identify fake news (which is probably why CNN takes advantage of this).

And by the way, all of the major news outlets fake news. They only apologize when they're actually caught.

Our Rating: False - USA Today and CNN are not factual news sites

Unlike most of our articles, this one is actually not satire.