CARROT RIVER — Due to a Wikipedia edit, the Town of Carrot River found themselves explaining that their mayor is not “Chuck Freeborn” and their previous mayor was not deposed during a t-rex scandal that involved famous American actor Jeff Goldblum.
Goldblum has been in roles in both the Jurassic Park series, as the handsome and charismatic Dr. Ian Malcolm, and in the Independence Day series, as the clever David Levinson – a former satellite technician from New York City.
In early July, the town received a call from a resident with “important information” that the town needed to know.
“We received a call the other day for Chuck. When we explained there is no ‘Chuck’ working here, the caller then said ‘Chuck is the mayor of Carrot River,’” the town wrote in a Facebook post on July 7.
“He said that someone must have been playing a joke on him and he apologized.”
Upon further investigation, the town discovered that their Wikipedia page had been improperly edited.
The page read that on April 17, 2020, mayor Bob Gagné and supposed “deputy mayor Jeff Goldblum were deposed in a t-rex scandal and replaced with previous mayor Chuck Freeborn”.
In reality, Gagné resigned for unspecified personal reasons effective Nov. 4, 2019. By April, Ila Boehm was appointed to acting mayor – who then won the byelection on May 8.
There has never been a mayor Chuck Freeborn in the town.
“Remember, what you read on the internet is not always factual,” the town said. “P.S. we have reported the error to Wikipedia now.”
As of July 8, the page has been corrected.
This is an obvious and humorous example of a growing concern about accurate information on the internet.
In found in a survey of 840 adult social media users in Canada that two in five (41 per cent) said were exposed to so-called “fake news” on their feeds, with the youngest residents being better equipped to distinguish reality from fiction. More than seven in 10 (72 per cent) told the pollster that it is difficult to discern which social media accounts are real and which ones are fake.