Soledad O'Brien of CNN, Huffington Post fall for obvious hoax (banker 1% restaurant tip, OWS, Political Carnival)

If you dislike CNN and their completely inaccurate self description of being a real news site as much as I do, the video below (cached) might just be absolutely hilarious. It features Soledad OBrien and three guests discussing a picture of a supposed restaurant receipt which shows a 1% tip and which includes a supposed note from the patron saying, "Get a real job".

Just one problem: it was all a hoax (link). The receipt was photoshopped; the tip on the real receipt was actually around 20% and there was no note.

It's not known whether the hoax was done just as a prank, or by a supporter or opponent of the Occupy Wall Street movement (an opponent could have done it knowing it would take some OWS and their supporters in the establishment media in, resulting in posts like this).

In any case, O'Brien and CNN fell for it, not showing even the barest regard for journalistic practices. Three other sites that fell for it include the Huffington Post (link), Business Insider (link), and Political Carnival (link).

The last link is like the "liberal" mirror image of things to be found at Gateway Pundit. The Business Insider link has some interesting examples of what look to be sockpuppets smearing someone who thought the picture was fake before that became known.

On a sidenote, while the restaurant story is fake, this proposal to tip less due to Obama being elected isn't: drhelen.blogspot.com/2008/10/should-you-tip-less-in-obama.html

3/23/12 UPDATE: The video that was here (AKA4woDYvtw) was deleted because the account it was in was terminated due to copyright complaints by Fox News and others. I replaced it with a video from CNN itself.