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Notes -
It's less about the NYT being a paper of record, although that makes it worse, and more about the NYT being an institution which brags about being better than any individual, versus a mere individual minus a team or fact checkers or lawyers..
Re: Stewart, good question. It's tough because Jon Stewart constantly straddles the line between comedian, news "communicator", and political commentator. And lots of people have complained, not without validity, about his whole clown nose on, clown nose off schtick. Did he fall for a hoax on his (now cancelled) Apple TV show? That's not great, and kudos to whoever got one over on him. Did he fall for a hoax giving a random interview? I honestly don't care. Is he doing a random standup bit in a club? All I care about is if it's funny, hoax or not.
I would say, if you hoaxed Fox News or maybe a perceived right wing newspaper like the Wallstreet Journal or the New York Post, they should have done better to weed you out. Good on you for exposing their lack of journalistic rigor.
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