BREAKING: The Sun Has Not Exploded


When publishing breaking news, all good editors should exercise a sense of urgency, while also preventing any cause for unnecessary alarm. This is particularly crucial when reporting news that the world is about to come to a sudden, apocalyptic end.

Just ask the Athens Banner-Herald, which on Monday fell “victim to miscue” after an emergency broadcast system notice mistakenly alerted readers that the sun had just exploded:

Erroneous news of the sun’s explosion gave way to one of the best breaking news retractions we’ve seen in awhile: “To our knowledge, the sun has not exploded,” the paper’s director of digital wrote in a post.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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