Fact Check

Miranda Cosgrove Arrested for Prostitution?

A parody video used logos and graphics from legitimate news sources to make a story about the actress's arrest seem believable.

Published July 21, 2017

 (s_bukley / Shutterstock.com)
Image Via s_bukley / Shutterstock.com
Claim:
Actress Miranda Cosgrove was arrested for prostitution in July 2017.

A video reporting that actress Miranda Cosgrove had been arrested for prostitution was widely circulated on social media in July 2017:

Cosgrove was not arrested in mid-2017, for prostitution or any other infraction. The NotThis News Twitter account is a "parody" of NowThis News, a media company that primarily distributes their own news videos through social media. NotThis News uses a near-copy of the legitimate NowThis News company's logo:

The NotThis News parody account carries a small disclaimer identifying it as a spoof. Yet in both the videos that had been posted to their Twitter feed as of this writing, they used the real NowThis News logo, making it appear as if it their parody video originated with the genuine NowThis News site:


Screenshot from NotThis News video

The fake Cosgrove news video also used what appear to be TMZ and Al Jazeera graphics to make the report seem more believable. And the salacious subtitles in the video, in which a woman purported to be Cosgrove propositions someone in a Mercedes, do not match the audio.

An unreliable Facebook page also picked up the false story.

Needless to say, if Miranda Cosgrove actually had been arrested for prostitution, that event would have been reported as national news.  

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.

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