U.S. comedian Kevin Hart in critical condition after gory car crash.
A fake news post that said comedian and actor Kevin Hart was injured in an auto accident augmented its made-up post with true details about his personal life. "Breaking: U.S. comedian Kevin Hart in critical condition after gory car crash," read the headline on an undated post on NYDailyNews-TV.com. Facebook users tagged the story as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to fight fake news. The article said Hart, 38, lost control of his car in Summerlin, Nev., on Monday night, corresponding to the first time we saw the post on Sept. 18, 2017. Summerlin is a planned community west of Las Vegas. The post said Hart had been exceeding the 25 mph speed limit and went off the road, hitting a guardrail. Hart was allegedly taken to MountainView Hospital, a real hospital in Summerlin, and remained in critical condition. This accident never happened, mind you, because the post is fake. The photo the website used was of a 2010 accident in Montana, in which a college student had fallen asleep and hit a guardrail that speared his car but missed the driver by inches. There have been no reports that Hart was in any car accident, let alone was injured. He has been posting on social media accounts since then, which the fake post actually used in its writeup of the bogus crash. The second half of the NYDailyNews-TV.com post went on about how Hart had confessed online the day prior about how he had made a "bad error in judgment" that had affected his family and made him a target of extortion. Hart had posted an Instagram video on Sept. 16 with the caption, "Sending so many apologies to my wife & kids. I gotta do better and I will. I'm not perfect and have never claimed to be ...I love you all." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Gossipy outlets reported that the extortion involved a "sexually suggestive" video of Hart and another woman. NYDailyNews-TV.com, meanwhile, is not a website for a TV news station or any other legitimate media outlet. It’s another fake news site, without any contact information, posing as a real news source, like others we’ve encountered. While it tries to capitalize on the name recognition of the tabloid New York Daily News, that real newspaper’s website is actually NYDailyNews.com. The story evoked a real celebrity scandal to bolster a completely fake car accident to draw traffic to a website masquerading as a well-known newspaper. We rate this claim Pants On Fire! See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com
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