CNN has 17 million bogus Twitter followers

While CNN has been facing accusations of being the king of "fake news" these days, it may also be the king of fake Twitter followers.

In fact, more than 17 million of CNN's Twitter followers have been determined to be "fake," according to Twitter Audit.

That's a full 48 percent of all of CNN's followers. And, according to a WND analysis, CNN is the worst offender of all prominent news organization hashtags.

Twitter Audit says it calculates the quality and score of real and fake followers by taking "a sample of up to 5000 (or more, if you subscribe to Pro) Twitter followers for a user and calculates a score for each follower. This score is based on number of tweets, date of the last tweet, and ratio of followers to friends."

While the results aren't perfect, the site says the calculations can determine whether a Twitter account obtained followers legitimately. It's unclear what percentage of the "fake" followers are simply inactive Twitter users who followed the accounts but are no longer tweeting on the site. A number of factors can affect the score, such as natural drop-off or churn rates.

Furthermore, high-profile Twitter users can – and often do – purchase thousands or even millions of followers. As CNET reports, any Twitter user can buy 1,000 followers for as little as $12.

Twitter Audit explains: "We use these scores to determine whether any given user is real or fake. Of course, this scoring method is not perfect but it is a good way to tell if someone with lots of followers is likely to have increased their follower count by inorganic, fraudulent, or dishonest means."

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Fox News also has a large number of fake followers, according to the site. The Twitter hashtag @FoxNews has nearly 7 million fake followers, Twitter Audit reports. That's 47 percent of its followers.

In comparison to CNN and Fox WND's Twitter handle, @worldnetdaily, has a 92 percent score of genuine followers, according to Twitter Audit. That means just 8 percent of WND's followers are in question.

The following are some other ratings of news organization hashtags with high numbers of fake followers:

47 percent of ABC News' Twitter followers are determined to be fake.
46 percent of the News York Times' Twitter followers are determined to be fake.
41 percent of the Huffington Post's Twitter followers are determined to be fake.
40 percent of the Wall Street Journal's Twitter followers are determined to be fake.
40 percent of Reuters' Twitter followers are determined to be fake.
36 percent of the Associated Press' Twitter followers are determined to be fake.
36 percent of the Washington Post's Twitter followers are determined to be fake.
35 percent of the Daily Mail Online's Twitter followers are determined to be fake.
35 percent of CBS News' Twitter followers are determined to be fake.
34 percent of NBC News' Twitter followers are determined to be fake.

Notably, aside from Fox News, conservative-leaning news organizations appear to have lower numbers of fake followers:

4 percent of Breitbart News' Twitter followers were determined to be fake.
6 percent of Newsbusters' Twitter followers were determined to be fake.
12 percent of the Washington Times' Twitter followers were determined to be fake.
16 percent of National Review Online's Twitter followers were determined to be fake.
16 percent of Newsmax's Twitter followers were determined to be fake.
15 percent of Hot Air's Twitter followers were determined to be fake.
23 percent of Townhall's Twitter followers were determined to be fake.
30 percent of the Daily Caller's Twitter followers were determined to be fake.

As WND has reported, CNN has been busted multiple times for bogus reporting in just the last month. It misreported an emotional moment before the Congressional Baseball Game, tweeting that it was only Democrats who knelt for prayer on the field.

Also, a CNN producer was caught on hidden camera admitting the network's focus on allegations that Trump's election campaign colluded with Russia is mostly for ratings, noting his mostly liberal audience wouldn't have to put up with that kind of treatment of former President Obama.

It was also reported Monday that three CNN employees handed in their resignations over a retracted story linking Trump to Russia. The story had been based on a single anonymous source.

As WND reported in February, President Trump labeled CNN "fake news" and even precluded his officials from making appearances on the cable giant.

"I don't watch CNN," Trump said. "I don't like watching fake news."

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Before his inauguration as president, Trump got into a now-famous confrontation with CNN's Jim Acosta when the president-elect refused to take a question from the reporter, while blasting CNN as "fake news."

CNN has repeatedly attacked President Trump in its reporting.

On June 17, the network defended communist Cuba and blasted the president for reversing former President Obama's deal with the nation. Trump said he is restricting American travel to the island, cutting back on the flow of U.S. cash to Cuba's military and insisting on key reforms in Havana.

Also this month, CNN mocked President Trump's "covfefe" Twitter typo while simultaneously having a glaring typo on its own chyron.