A video with all the trappings of a news report about Japanese scientists making meat from human feces went viral—not surprisingly.

What was surprising was that legitimate media outlets such as Fox News, International Business Times, Gizmodo, The Village Voice, and New York Daily News picked it up and treated it like news.

It would seem as though none of them thought to actually track down the video’s source. If they had, as Salon’s Justin Elliot did, they might have found that the story first appeared in 1993.

Not only that, but the story has all the trappings of a hoax, as Salon points out.

This isn’t the first time Fox News has presented dubious information as legitimate news.

Remember when they reported on the Los Angeles Police Department’s purchase of a new fleet of jetpacks? Or the Muslim ban on padded bras?

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