Hoax Museum Blog: Journalism

Cheating Hubby Caught on Street View — A recent article in The Sun (and we all know how diligent The Sun is about fact checking) claimed that a woman, while using Google Street View, spotted her husband's car parked outside another woman's home. Now she's filing for divorce!

But Matt Platino, of the Idiot Forever blog, claims he hoaxed the sun into printing the story:


There's been no word yet from The Sun about their side of the story.

Astrological Discrimination — Two days ago the Daily Mail published an article describing an unnamed "Salzburg insurance company" that seems to be practicing a form of astrological discrimination in its hiring. The company is said to have placed this ad in newspapers:


When accused of discrimination, the company responded: "A statistical study indicated that almost all of our best employees across Austria have one of the five star signs." And a spokeswoman later followed up with this argument: "When an employer considers star signs and says: 'I want to only hire Pisces,' for an example, it must be assumed that within this group of people born under the sign of Pisces there are old and young people, women and women etc. It does appear like a certain limitation, but it is not discrimination."

The story has now begun to appear in other papers and websites, although the Daily Mail appears to be the sole original source. So is there any evidence the story is true? Not that I can find. My German-language skills aren't too good, but I can't find any sign of the story in papers such as the Salzburger Nachrichten.

New York Times Hoaxed — The NY Times apologized for printing an email from the Mayor of Paris in which he criticized Caroline Kennedy's bid for Clinton's senate seat. You see, it's easy to put a fake email address in the "From" field, so it's the Times's policy to always check that the person who seems to have sent them an email actually did so. But they didn't do that in this case, and now the Mayor is denying he wrote the email.

The Times is "reviewing procedures" to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. Which probably means some underpaid intern is getting yelled at. Link: NY Times. (Thanks, John!)

Man names son “Carter Barack Obama Sealy” — A Broomfield, Colorado man got his name in the local newspaper for claiming he had named his new son Carter Barack Obama Sealy. He also said that his two other children were named Brooke Trout Sealy and Cooper John Elway Sealy. Supposedly he had a deal with his wife. She got to choose the kids' first names, and he got to choose their middle names.

The children's grandmother spilled the beans on the father, notifying the paper that the names were not real. The guy's wife explained that the fake names were her husband's idea of a joke. She added, "My husband's an idiot."

The Fake New York Times — If you were lucky enough, you might have been able to get your hands on one of the approximately 1.2 million fake copies of the New York Times that were handed out today, mostly in NY and LA. Otherwise, like me, you'll have to try and buy a copy on eBay.

The paper, dated July 4, 2009, declared "IRAQ WAR ENDS" on its front page. Articles inside described the repeal of the Patriot Act, and the indictment of Bush on high treason, among other things. There was also an accompanying website.

The size of the print run was impressive. Must have cost a lot of money. The Yes Men are taking credit for it.

The NY Times, on their City Room blog, quoted Alex Jones, author of a history of the family that controls The Times, as saying, "I consider this a gigantic compliment to The Times."

Also from the City Room blog:


Links: Yahoo!, BBC

Fake reporting of Shenzhou VII launch — China recently launched its third manned mission to space. Oddly, the Xinhua news agency reported the launch hours before it occurred. This would be understandable -- news agencies routinely prepare copy about major stories in advance of the event itself -- but the article included detailed dialogue between the astronauts:


Xinhua explained that the story had been posted early "due to a technical problem." Must be a glitch in their time travel machine. Link: news.com.au

The Montgomery County Bulletin Plagiarism Scandal — The story of the Montgomery County (Texas) Bulletin Plagiarism scandal, so far:

1) A reader pointed out to Slate.com writer Jody Rosen that an article he had written about Jimmy Buffett had been plagiarized by Mark Williams, a writer for a small weekly Texas paper, the Montgomery County Bulletin.

2) Rosen contacted the editor of the Bulletin, Mike Ladyman, who pretty much blew him off.

3) Rosen did some more investigating and realized that Mark Williams had plagiarized almost EVERYTHING he wrote for the Bulletin. And a substantial amount of the rest of the content of the Bulletin also came from plagiarized sources.

4) Rosen published an article in Slate about what he had found.

5) Mike Ladyman, in response, decided to cease publication of the Bulletin.

It's interesting to read the statements of Ladyman and Williams. They truly seem to feel they're the injured parties in all of this. (Cognitive dissonance at work.) Ladyman, for instance, complains that Rosen didn't handle the process "professionally." And Williams sarcastically congratulates Rosen for "breaking an already fragile soul."

There seemed to be some question about whether Mark Williams was actually a real person, or an alter ego of Mike Ladyman. However, Williams talked to NPR's On the Media, so apparently he is real. (Thanks to Joe Littrell!)

Fly Derrie-Air — Derrie-Air claims to be the world's only carbon-neutral luxury airline. From its website:


The reality is that Derrie-Air doesn't exist. It's a fake company dreamed up by Philadelphia Media Holdings, owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. In addition to creating the Derrie-Air site, they also ran Derrie-Air ads in their papers as a marketing test "to demonstrate the power of our brands, in print and online, to drive traffic awareness -- in this case for a brand that doesn’t exist and is fictitious." More details in Editor & Publisher, and on MSNBC.

I predict this will become a case of satirical prophecy, in that it won't be long before airlines actually are implementing measures such as charging by the pound. (Thanks, Rebecca)

Unwinding and Rewinding Toilet Paper — An article about "tornado oddities" on Yahoo! News leads off with this one:


'You've gotta be kidding me' is my reaction also. An article on twincities.com provides a few more details about this unlikely event:


So the toilet paper didn't rewind into a perfect roll, which is what I thought when I first read the Yahoo! article. It just collected in the sink. Weird, but I'm willing to accept this could have happened. (Thanks, Big Gary)

Punishing linkbaiters? — On May 9, money.co.uk published a story alleging that a 13-year-old kid in Texas had stolen his dad's credit card and used it to rent a motel room and some prostitutes. The cute/quirky part of the story was that the kids simply played Xbox with the "$1,000 a night girls." The story quickly spread throughout the media, appearing in The Sun, The Daily Telegraph, and Fox News, among others. But a few days later it was exposed as a hoax, since the police had no record of such an incident. David B posted about it here in the forum.

Online marketer Lyndon Antcliff admitted he had posted the story on the website of his client, money.co.uk, as an experiment in "linkbait." He said, "It's been a lesson in the power of social media and the power of people suspending their disbelief. [Traditional news organizations] are always banging about how inaccurate blogs are, but in this case, it was the opposite."

The story of the hoax and its exposure now has got a second wind, and is doing the rounds again, on account of some suggestion that google may punish linkbaiters by lowering their page rank. This doesn't sound like a good plan to me. Linkbait (or, more simply, hoaxes) may have publicity as a motive, but can also serve other, more socially useful purposes (i.e. exposing the pompous and gullible). Plus, once hoaxes are exposed, they become genuine news stories. So why try to artificially suppress their visibility?

However, Google hasn't actually said it will punish linkbait, but Wired's article about the hoax suggests the possibility. They write, "We didn't get an official response from Google about how the search engine might treat fake content that's used as a marketing tool, but search quality guru Matt Cutts implied that the company frowns upon this sort of practice." (Thanks, Joe)

Hitler Doll — About two weeks ago a story started going around alleging that an Adolf Hitler doll, marketed to children, was being sold in the Ukraine. From the Daily Mail:


But now it seems that the reports of the Hitler Doll were a hoax. WikiNews reports:

Wrong Hillary — From the March 19th edition of the Mahoning Valley Tribune Chronicle:


You have to wonder how a reporter could be that clueless. Did he seriously imagine that Hillary Clinton would be there answering the phones? Or maybe he knew it wasn't Clinton, but thought it would make the story sound better if he attributed the quotes to her, and that no one would ever know the difference.

Is Blue the new Green? — In what is one of the most absurd articles I've read in a while, Chicago Tribune reporter Nara Schoenberg tries to argue that "blue" is the new "green". In other words, green (as a symbol of environmentalism) is old hat. So people are now starting to say "blue" instead of "green".

Her main evidence is that Mercedes-Benz calls its new clean-diesel technology BLUETEC. And a few environmental websites have blue pages.

I refer to this journalistic technique in Hippo Eats Dwarf as the "Generalization from a Single Example": "A reporter makes a sweeping statement, but backs it up with only one or two examples... [leading] audiences to believe they represent a larger trend, even if the reality is the opposite."

David Roberts of Grist Magazine offers this analysis of Schoenberg's article:

Twins get married… or maybe not — Last week this story was EVERYWHERE. A pair of twins in Britain, who had been adopted into different families, met and fell in love... without realizing they were twins. They then got married, only to discover the terrible secret they shared. Their marriage was promptly annulled.

When I first read about this, it sounded pretty fishy to me -- very much like an urban legend being reported as news -- but on a cursory reading of the story I also got the impression that there were officials involved who knew about the case but couldn't disclose the identity of the twins. So I accepted the news as true. I think the paragraph in the BBC report linked to above that got me was this one:



To me, this sounded as if Mo O'Reilly actually knew about the case first-hand. Unfortunately, I didn't read the article closely enough. Apparently the only person who knew about the case was Lord Alton who used it as an example during a House of Lords debate on the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill. Lord Alton had heard about the case "from a judge who was involved." In other words, the source is a FOAF (friend of a friend), one of the classic signs of an urban legend.

Jon Henley of the Guardian summarizes the situation:



So it looks like this piece of news needs to be categorized as an urban-legend-reported-as-news until proven otherwise. (Thanks, Joe)

Non-Smokers Not Fired — Last week quite a few papers ran this story:



Turns out, the story was a hoax. Stephanie Lamprecht, the reporter whose name appeared on the byline, said that her source -- some guy named Thomas Joschko -- just made it up: "He said it was a joke and worth the trouble. He said he's a chain-smoker himself and said he was tired of smokers being hassled so much."

From what I understand, it's not clear that Thomas Joschko even owns a business. He's just a guy who picked up a phone and told a reporter a wild story, trusting that the reporter would do minimal fact checking before running it.

This was the same modus operandi of Joseph Mulhattan, one of the most prolific hoaxers in America at the end of the nineteenth century. He would invent bizarre stories and wire them to papers, which would invariably print them. It's nice to see that the same tricks still work.

Hippo Goes For A Swim — Here's a story I missed last month, even though it occurred right here in my backyard (figuratively speaking). FoxSports.com took the lead in disseminating it, but versions of it, such as the one below (from the Seattle Times) appeared in many papers:


Turns out there was no escaped hippo lounging in Steve Crosby's swimming pool. The San Diego Wild Animal Park doesn't even have hippos (though the San Diego Zoo does). Crosby claims that it was a locker-room joke that somehow got mistaken as real news.

He should have said there was a hippo in his pool eating a dwarf.

The Sound of Quintuplets Crying — When a Russian woman recently gave birth to quintuplets, it made news around the world. But BBC viewers who watched the footage of the babies might have thought something was a little odd. Why were the babies crying, even though they had respirators in their mouths? It turns out the cries were dubbed in:

How to cure internet addiction — Here's a news story that's been making the rounds recently. This case is said to have occurred in Chengdu city, China:

It was posted on Ananova.com, so right away that lessens the probability that it's true. It's also been reported in the London Sunday Times, the News of the World, the Sunday Herald, and the New York Post.

I can believe that a wife would chop her husband's hand off, but I find it hard to believe that this guy would a) not see his wife standing next to him with a huge knife, and b) not hear or feel a thing.

Vicious attacks by girls increasing or decreasing? — Joe Littrell alerted me to an amusing piece on slate.com which takes the air out of a Boston Globe story about the disturbing trend of "Vicious Attacks By Girl Cliques Seen Increasing." Jack Shafer points out that the article contradicts its premise in its own subtitle, where it admits, "Despite Police Statistics, Violence Causing Worries." In other words, police statistics show that girl-on-girl violence is decreasing, but the article tries to spin it the other way, presumably because a rise in girls fighting each other sounds more intriguing, especially when you can lead off with vivid descriptions of girls fighting such as this one:

The Boston Globe article manages to use two of the journalistic ploys that I list in Hippo Eats Dwarf: The phony crime wave (in which reporters grab readers' attention on slow news days by reporting crimes that would normally go unmentioned), and the generalization from a single example (in which the reporter claims to have discovered a trend, based on a sample size of one or two examples).

Fake Al Sharpton Fools MSNBC — Newsgroper is a parody site full of fake celebrity blogs. To make sure that no one confuses its content with real news, it posts the warning "Fake Parody Blogs, Political Humor, Celebrity Satire, Funny Commentary" in the title bar of every page.

Apparently, this warning wasn't enough for MSNBC's Alex Johnson. In a piece about Michael Vick, he quoted from Newsgroper's fake Al Sharpton blog, presenting the following quotation as if it were something Sharpton really had said:
Caught in the blunder, MSNBC quickly removed the quotation from the article and posted this correction:



To me, the self-serving correction is worse than the original mistake. The fake Al Sharpton blog isn't a hoax. A hoax is a deliberate deception. Since the Al Sharpton blog announces right in the title bar that it's a parody blog, it hardly counts as a hoax.

MSNBC should retract their correction, and admit they're victims of sloppy reporting, not of a hoax. (Thanks to Cranky Media Guy for the link.)