On 28 December 2016, fake news purveyor HeadlineNews.com published an article stating that Sherri Shepherd, an American actress and comedian best known as a former co-host of The View and star of the ABC sitcom Less Than Perfect, had died of a heart attack at age 49:
Sherri Shepherd, the actress best known as The Help’s Minny Jackson, has died after suffering a heart attack. She was 49.
Her major breakthrough came in 2011, when she starred in in the Civil Rights drama The Help, for which she won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA, and Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress. She would follow up her work in the help with a critically acclaimed performance in Ryan Coogler’s drama Fruitvale Station for which she received the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress. In recent years she has received acclaim for her work in the films Get on Up, Black or White, Smashed, Snowpiercer, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, and Zootopia. In 2016, she received Golden Globe and SAG nominations for her performance as mathematician Dorothy Vaughan in the comedy-drama Hidden Figures.
“She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly,” says Lourd, 24. “Our entire family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers.”
Shepherd was flying from London to Los Angeles on Friday, Dec. 23, when she went into cardiac arrest. Paramedics removed her from the flight and rushed her to a nearby hospital, where she was treated for a heart attack. She later died in the hospital.
Virtually every detail of the post is incorrect. Sherri Shepherd is not dead, nor was she hospitalized for a heart attack. She did not play the movie roles named above (it appears that the author confused Shepherd for another actress, Octavia Spencer, whose photo adorns the article and who did appear in all the listed films). Adding bad taste to injury, the final two paragraphs were copied and pasted, verbatim, from a People magazine article about the death of Carrie Fisher, who actually did suffer from cardiac arrest on a flight from London to Los Angeles on 23 December 2016.
The web site carries a disclaimer characterizing its content as "satire" and "funny," though in doing so it abuses the definitions of both terms:
Headlinen [sic] News is a satire site. We use real people to make real funny stories. Chill folks, its [sic] all for fun.