Fictitious News Now

Last week, a local news website published a fictitious news story. Their retraction raised more questions than it answered.

Last Monday, the local news website Cville Right Now posted a peculiar retraction:

“Cville Right Now recently published a report that told a fictitious story about an individual who does not exist — Deion Taylor. Our article claimed this man was represented by UVA’s Innocence Project and that he received $580,000 from the General Assembly. Neither is true. It also quoted the former director of the Innocence Project — Deirdre Enright — when, in fact, Ms. Enright had never been interviewed about this non-existent person or payment.” [see the fictitious story at the bottom of the page]

Cville Right Now was launched last April by Saga Communications, which operates a collection of radio stations in the Charlottesville area known as the Charlottesville Media Group, including 1070 WINA Newsradio. WINA news staff write the stories for CRN. Jaclyn Piermarini, who was listed as the author of the fictitious story, was hired as the news website’s Editor-in-Chief. In March, Piermarini was interviewed about the news website’s first year.

Back in May, Charlottesville Media Group general manager Garrett Klingel appeared to be taking aim at the Daily Progress in a release announcing the launch, saying, “we don’t think people should have to pay money and create an account just to know what’s going on in our community” and added, “we saw a real hole in our community for timely, unbiased news, without all the national filler.” WINA was already doing eight hours of live and local news talk and sports every weekday, Klingel said, and so now that would be offered for free on their news website. CRN was mirroring Saga’s other “Right Now” branded local news sites that launched in Clarksville, Tennessee, Asheville, North Carolina, and Jonesboro, Arkansas. Just last month, Saga announced they had “accelerated plans to launch local online news sites across its entire market footprint,” adding 18 new local news websites by the end of the second quarter.

Like other Saga "Right Now" branded news websites, CRN is more of a news aggregator, producing very few, if any, deeply reported stories, instead providing short pieces about local announcements and summaries of previously published stories, WINA radio interviews, or local press releases or police reports.

Remarkably, CRN’s admission that they had published a made up story as news received no local media attention. If it weren’t for a post on Charlottesville Reddit, its unlikely the larger reading public would have known about it. What’s more, Piermarini has quietly disappeared and the retraction didn’t address what everyone who heard about it wanted to know: how did this happen?

“This seems like more than a mistake,” wrote one DTM reader. “ They owe their readers an accounting of how this fraud occurred.”

News organizations often run corrections when they get the facts wrong, or in extreme cases can be found guilty of defamation when they publish false information knowingly, as Rolling Stone magazine and journalist Sabrina Erdely were in 2016 for a false story about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia. The reporting failure had a devastating effect on those named in the story, cost Rolling Stone millions and contributed to the sale of the magazine in 2017, ended Erdely’s career, and set back progress that had been made on addressing sexual violence on college campuses, which was still very much a problem at UVA.

While CRN’s fictitious story hasn’t caused that kind of damage, it did put words in a real person’s mouth and is a blow to a news website’s credibility in the age of “fake news” accusations. Again, how did this happen?

Piermarini didn’t not responds to requests for comment, but Klingel responded by saying, “the article was a training document not meant for publication,” and that they were “handling the issue internally and have put together systems to ensure this mistake does not happen again.”

I asked Klingel to explain what kind of training involved the use of a fictitious news story, but he has yet to respond.

According to Kate Sweeney, Assistant Professor of Practice at UVA's Department of Media Studies, the fictional CRN story resembles the type of exercise perspective interns or new hires are asked to write and/or edit under a tight deadline after being given a pseudo scenario. “But I cannot confirm that is what happened in this case,” she said.

As Sweeney points out, most reputable news organizations, in the interest of transparency, publish a clear corrections and retractions policy as part of their standards and practices.

"The ethics policy published on Cville Right Now’s website does not appear to address corrections," says Sweeney. "Following this error, perhaps an addition will be made, as such policies are typically living documents that are expanded to address shifts in technology, practices, and culture. For example, most news organizations have expanded their published policies to address AI. I do not see AI addressed on Cville Right Now’s current ethics policy."

Indeed, some DTM readers speculated that the fictional story might have been generated by AI, but CRN has neither confirmed nor denied that.

In addition, while Klingel didn’t respond to questions about Piermarini’s current status, he recently replaced her as CRN’s Editor-in-Chief on the Charlottesville Media Group’s leadership page.

ORIGIONAL FABRICATED STORY:

Headline: Virginia Awards $580K to Exonerated Man Represented by UVA Innocence Project

Author: Jaclyn Piermarini

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLERIGHTNOW) – A new Virginia law passed in 2025 has awarded compensation to Deion Taylor, a former client of the University of Virginia School of Law’s Innocence Project Clinic, who was exonerated after spending more than 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

According to the University of Virginia School of Law, the General Assembly approved a claims bill compensating Taylor with over $580,000 after determining he had been wrongfully convicted of robbery and firearms charges in Portsmouth. Taylor’s conviction was vacated in 2021 after new evidence undermined the reliability of the witness identification used against him.

Taylor is the fourth Innocence Project Clinic client to receive state compensation. UVA Law professor Deirdre Enright, founding director of the clinic, said Taylor “persevered through an unimaginable ordeal and maintained his innocence from day one.” She called the compensation a “critical acknowledgment” of the harm caused.

Under Virginia law, wrongfully convicted individuals must receive a gubernatorial pardon or have their convictions vacated to be eligible for compensation. Taylor’s legal team pursued a legislative claims bill after a petition for a writ of actual innocence was not granted. According to the release, Taylor now works full-time and is continuing his education.