No, CNN Did Not Air Half An Hour Of Hardcore Adult Entertainment: How The Media Turned One Paragraph Of Hoax Into Friday’s Big Story [Debunked]

By now you’ve no doubt heard that CNN supposedly aired half-an-hour of hardcore pornography Thursday night, mistakenly airing smut featuring a beloved transexual adult film star instead of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown — and leaving the internet ripe for cheap jokes involving the word “parts.” Too bad none of it happened.

On Friday, news outlets across the world, from Fox News to the Inquisitr, reported that RCN Boston (the cable TV operator for the Boston area) somehow got hacked, or someone in front of a monitor somewhere made a huge mistake, resulting in the most unfortunate broadcast mixup of all time. Instead of seeing the popular Bourdain travelogue, CNN viewers in Boston were instead treated to hardcore adult entertainment featuring transsexual adult film star Riley Quinn.

CNN Accidentally Airs 30mins Porn to Veiwers https://t.co/yqwHp0RvJ6 pic.twitter.com/GhW94n2YdO

— NGhubs (@officialNGhubs) November 25, 2016

The unfortunate juxtaposition of hardcore adult entertainment and a show involving the word “Parts” made for some juvenile humor in headlines and on social media.

“Solid programming.”

“I expected to see eating on the show, but not that kind.”

The whole thing might possibly be one of the funniest media stories of 2016 – had it been true, that is. But, alas, it is not.

As with all things that sound too ridiculous to be true, the first thing you should do before you believe it is check a hoax-debunking site, such as Snopes. And what do you know, Snopes has confirmed that, in fact, CNN most certainly did not air porn on Thursday night.

As it turns out, the whole story began with two anonymous tweets from a Twitter user who provided no evidence to back up his or her complaint.

In a series of tweets that has since been either deleted, or hidden from public view, Twitter user @solikearose first asked if any other Boston RCN cable users saw the adult film instead of Bourdain’s show. He or she then sent a follow-up tweet, joking that someone at RCN was going to come to work on Friday and find out that the cable operator had broadcast adult entertainment on CNN.

That was it. Those two tweets were the entire basis for a story that soon went far and wide, and turned RCN and CNN into laughingstocks for a few hours on Friday.

In fact, lost in the narrative of the story was the fact that RCN tried to contact the Twitter user who first complained, asking @solikearose to contact them and give them his or her address so they could send a technician out to get to the bottom of the mix-up. In a follow-up tweet, RCN asked the user to call them on the telephone, and insisted that no other Boston-area CNN viewers had reported being shown adult entertainment instead of Bourdain.

We made Anthony Bourdain’s recipe for macaroni and cheese. Then we fed it to him: https://t.co/dg6Tp9LgAr pic.twitter.com/89JkSSjUxO

— VICE Video (@VICE_Video) November 23, 2016

CNN, for its part, didn’t do itself any favors. The news outlet issued a statement that more or less admitted having aired adult entertainment.

“The RCN cable operator in Boston aired inappropriate content for 30 minutes on CNN last night. CNN has asked for an explanation.”

However, not long afterwards, the news network walked back from its earlier statement, denying that the incident had ever happened.

“Despite media reports to the contrary, RCN assures us that there was no interruption of CNN’s programming in the Boston area last night.”

Similarly, RCN also issued a statement, noting that the cable company found zero evidence that its programming had been tampered with, and that no other Boston-area subscribers reported seeing hardcore adult entertainment on CNN.

Which just goes to show: if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

As of this writing, it is not clear if the Twitter user who initially made the complaint about hardcore adult entertainment being shown on CNN was simply playing an elaborate prank, or if he or she had, in some way, gotten his or her signals crossed on his or her own TV.

[Featured Image by photo.ua/Shutterstock]