Mark Wahlberg’s new Flecha Cantina Mexican restaurant “went up in flames” on Wednesday, the night before its ribbon-cutting ceremony. At least that’s according to TMZ’s initial report on Wednesday, which grabbed all the attention and copycat headlines.
“People are standing outside Flecha Cantina in Las Vegas, staring through the windows at the blaze raging inside the eatery,” read a caption in TMZ’s story, which called the blaze “downright shocking.”
Except that none of this actually happened.
Misfire
Although TMZ usually rates high scores for accuracy, the flames in its photo, and a number of viral videos, were an illusion created by reflections from a restaurant window.
A firepit on the outdoor patio is all that burned, which is pretty much a firepit’s only job anyway.
The Clark County Fire Department responded at 5:30 p.m. Within 20 minutes, a crew was able to sufficiently fight back the flames to reach the valve shutting the firepit off.
Marky Mark’s restaurant, located in the Town Square shopping mall just south of the Las Vegas Strip. reopened at 7:15 p.m. And Flecha’s grand opening went ahead as scheduled the next day.
The total extent of the damage was the defective firepit, an adjoining chair, and the lasting misconception that Flecha burned to the ground.
Flame Game
A day later, TMZ issued a “non-correction correction.” In other words, they didn’t admit getting any facts wrong.
They just joked about the misunderstanding.
“Nothing like a flambéed patio to get a restaurant off to a hot start,” an uncredited reporter wrote, boasting about the access that the celebrity news website had to Wahlberg, who personally “set the record straight” for them.
However, as is the case with almost all sensational national news stories, only the initial headline was widely seen and remembered — a cognitive bias known as the primacy effect. Corrections after the fact never get as much distribution or attention.
Not to toot our own horn, but this is Casino.org’s first story about the non-incident.
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