Ariana Oliver- Fake Editions of the Washington Post

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/fake-editions-of-the-washington-post-handed-out-at-multiple-locations-in-dc/2019/01/16/1d6a0402-19a5-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.cc9004e59709

This article was published on January 26, 2019 by Emily Heil and Paul Farhi. On Wednesday, about 10,000 copies of a fake Washington Post newspaper claiming that

Trump is leaving office were handed out in several locations in Washington D.C., including in front of the White House. The newspapers accurately resembled the Washington Post, but instead of having their usual “Democracy Dies in Darkness” at the top, it said “Democracy Awakens in Action”, and was dated May 1, 2019. An activist group called The Yes Men created the satirical newspaper, along with a fake Washington Post website to go with their article. The fake news story said that Trump left a note of resignation on a napkin in the Oval Office, then left for Yalta. It said that a big part of his departure was due to the nationwide women led protests. This is leading people to believe that the fake article is a promotion for the annual Women’s March that is to take place on January 19th. One of the co-founders of the group who made the newspaper revealed that it was intended to be an article from the future, in an effort to inspire different ways that people could help damage Trump’s presidency. The website was shut down Wednesday afternoon, and there were warnings issued about the papers being fake.

This article is similar to Yellow Journalism. Even though this story was fake, it was still sensationalizing and publicizing the Women’s March, to gather more

support. Similar to when the sinking of The Maine was sensationalized because it encouraged people
to blame the Spanish, even though there was no solid evidence. Here, there is definitely no evidence
that Trump is leaving, but they were trying to sensationalize the Women’s March and play upon
people’s dislike of Trump. They released the newspaper at the perfect time because the march was happening soon and we are also in the middle of the ongoing government shutdown, so people are even
more annoyed than usual with Trump’s antics.