Denzel Washington - "Don't Just Be First ... Tell the Truth"

A completely false story about Denzel Washington spread far and wide on multiple “news” outlets – and on Facebook - in 2016. The story originated on a website called “American News 24” (Anews24.org) and attributed a quote from Charles Evers, brother of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers, to Washington. The quote had been lifted from a story in the New York Post. The fake news website presented the false information that Washington was supporting Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. (Washington did not endorse any presidential candidate in the election.)

The story spread from the original fake news site to multiple fake news sites, including one called “Breitbartt” (not the “real” site, with one "t" at the end, which contains much suspect so-called news, but did not carry this fake story). One Facebook post, which labeled the story fake news, noted that the post had already been shared 10,000 times in 6 hours. (There were multiple Facebook posts, presumably being shared a similar number of times.)

​Denzel Washington spoke about the fake news story at a screening of the film "Fences" on December 7. He reminded the media to take seriously the responsibility to report correctly – not just quickly. (Presumably he was taking to task the television and print news organizations, rather than fake news sites like the one that targeted him.)

The video clip of Washington, in which he shares a quote sometimes incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain – “If you don’t read the newspaper you’re uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you’re misinformed” – has now been shared on multiple sites and is being used by some as an indictment of legitimate news sources.

Context matters. In this case, a video clip of Denzel Washington, an intelligent, credible spokesperson, whose reputation was harmed by a fake news source, is now being used to harm the reputation of legitimate news sources.
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The original fake news article is cited in this Washington Post article.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/14/denzel-washington-endorsed-trump-according-to-americanews-breitbartt-usanewshome-and-facebook/?utm_term=.531471da9f13

The Snopes article can be found here.
http://www.snopes.com/denzel-washington-switches-trump/

The Denzel Washington video clip can be seen here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWNE2ih9wKY

​Here is a list from RealClearPolitics of various quotes attributed, correctly and incorrectly, to Mark Twain.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/12/10/fake_twain_quotes_and_other_hazards_of_twitter_116376-3.html