Editor Reports: Why publish something you think is untrue?

ATV Today’s editor Doug Lambert ponders on the bemusing question of why a news-site would report a story it thought was untrue in the latest edition of ATV Reports.

Digital Spy reported on the tabloid story that Kerry Katona was to appear in ITV soap Coronation Street. 

After reporting the story the site then checked with the Coronation Street press office who, of course, denied the story. So Digital Spy then posted a mini blog titled – “Is Kerry Katona joining Corrie? Thought not”…..then why report it?

Also within the blog was ‘Me thinks that it was a case of taking a controversial ‘name’ and a high-profile soap before adding them together to fill column inches’….and of course Digital Spy didn’t do the same, did they? Oh no. It’s not like they dedicated a story to a rumour they thought was untrue.

Some things are best left for April 1st, but it does beg the question, other than news editors who may cover it to fill a space in a dull days schedule, does any of the readers out there actually really believe what The Sun and The Star publish in their ‘entertainment’ section?

Any one brave enough to come forward and say they trust these papers for factual content? Other than the staff at Digital Spy we mean…