ABC, CNN, and MSNBC all rushed to report how the world was joyfully celebrating the defeat of Donald Trump with fireworks lighting up the skies in London and church bells gleefully chiming in Paris.
Only problem? It never actually happened.
The tweet has now been deleted.
Gotta love this pithy response,
"ABC new seems to have a lot of problems locating the provenance of explosions."
British news laughed off the bungled reporting with this delightful headline:
The article points out the mistake, explaining,
"… [T]he fireworks were part of the annual Bonfire Night celebrations.
The event marks the anniversary of 1605 when Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
One social media user reacted with glee, saying: 'Shall we tell them? I wanna tell them!'
"We heard church bells in Paris, fireworks in London. This is indeed a moment the world is watching!" - Jeff Zeleny reportedly told Wolf Blitzer on Saturday, calling the celebrations in Europe extraordinary.
Then there's MSNBC's Ari Melber who broadcast the news of global celebrations in "Places like Paris where the actual church bells were ringing."
"That doesn't happen for every election. That was the reaction there to mark Trump losing. Joe Biden becoming our President-Elect.
You're right, Mr. Melber, and it didn't happen for THIS election, either!
For a chuckle, click here to watch both clips.
Even SNL cashed in on the fake news ...
They want so badly for it all to be true that they don't even do their homework to corroborate any of it.
Thankfully, the Associated Press did (at least this time) do their homework, and fact checked the train wreck that was MSM's reporting on these global celebrations, specifically the bells in Paris, and the result is so anticlimactic it's downright comical:
AP'S ASSESSMENT: False. The bells were not related to the U.S. presidential race, the Paris diocese confirmed to The Associated Press. …
"BELLS ringing across Paris!" read a tweet featuring a video viewed more than 1.4 million times. … A Facebook post with the claim from the popular Facebook page Occupy Democrats was shared more than 10,000 times. Saturday Night Live Weekend Update host Colin Jost joked, "Do you know how bad you have to be for Paris to ring church bells when you lose?"
However, both the Paris Diocese and the Diocese of Nanterre, a Paris suburb, confirmed to the AP that their churches did not ring their bells for Biden. … ‘As every Saturday evening at 5:45 p.m., bells of Notre-Dame de l'Assomption church in Meudon rang to announce the Mass at 6 p.m.' "
*Emphasis ours
