Hoaxes

The prank-press conference held last week by farcical activists the Yes Men has reopened the “speed versus accuracy” debate, an argument that has taken place in journalism for a good 200 years. Craig Silverman wrote about the issue in the Columbia Journalism Review's blog Regret The Error on October 23. After receiving a faux-press release last week, purportedly from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announcing a shift in policy to support climate legislation in Congress,...Go to full story

Apparently, October is National Hoax Month -- or so it would seem, given the proliferation of fraudulent stories that appeared over the past couple weeks. It all began with a boy not in a balloon... By now, you've almost certainly heard of Falcon Heene, the 6-year-old boy from Fort Collins, Colorado who, for a brief period of time, was thought to be trapped inside his father's homemade weather balloon. News crews flocked to capture the scene and helicopters from the Colorado...Go to full story

In recent weeks, the media has reported on a number of hoaxes. First, Balloon Boy; then, a fake Chamber of Commerce press conference; and now, the Latvian Meteorite.

A phony meteorite impact near the northern town of Mazsalaca, perpetrated by a local telephone company, was briefly picked up by the press on October 26 and almost as quickly debunked. Phil Plait, the astronomer behind the blog BadAstronomy, gave a rundown of the fake impact story. Plait...Go to full story

Starting this weekend, audiences in the UK will come face to face with their own obsession: celebrity.

In the new documentary, "Starsuckers," director Chris Atkins examines the cultural phenomenon of fame using organized stunts and undercover reporting. While the film targets the UK's abundant and notorious tabloid papers, Atkins believes that the shoddy journalistic practices of these types of publications has seeped out, infecting more credible...Go to full story

Reuters (and subsequently The New York Times and Washington Post) fell for a hoax press release issued by the farcical activists the Yes Men on Monday, October 19.  Greg Sargent writes in his blog that Reuters published the story, reporting that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had reversed its opposition to climate change legislation, based on a hoax press release.  The Reuters story was then picked up by the New York Times and the Washington Post, among other...Go to full story

Before the Colorado "Balloon Boy" hoax, there was the "Monster Pig" publicity stunt, which much like "Balloon Boy" involved the exploitation of a young boy and generated press attention around the world.

The 2007 photo distributed by the Associated Press (AP) featured an 11-year-old Alabama boy hunter holding a large handgun from behind--what only appeared to be--a wild 1051-pound beast. The image turned out to be fake, created...Go to full story

Chase Jarvis Blog reports that on June 24, "Two French students were awarded the annual Grand Prix du Photoreportage Etudiant last week to honor a photographic story that presented images documenting the precarious lives of students today and the things they must do in order to survive and succeed. The only catch is that the entire story was a fake." Guillaume Chauvin and Remi Huberr, enrolled as art students at Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of...Go to full story

AFP reports "An Irish student's fake quote on the Wikipedia online encyclopedia has been used in newspaper obituaries around the world, the Irish Times reported."

The planted quote was wrongly cited in Wikipedia as being said by the late, famed French composer Maurice Jarre who wrote award winning musical scores for movies, such as Doctor Zhivago. The student, Shane Fitzgerald, a senior at University College Dublin, told the Irish Times that he was doing...Go to full story

New York City media outlets, including Channel 7 Eyewitness News and 1010 WINS radio, fell for a fake press release that claimed  rapper and ex-con Lil' Kim was "planning to run for mayor of Hoboken," New Jersey.

According to The New York Daily News, Lil' Kim's  publicist, Lisa Perkins" said "She is NOT running for mayor of Hoboken." Perkins said that Kim "has no association" with the hoaxer who was "committing...Go to full story

In what is being described by some bloggers as the Great Firewall of China,  the Chinese government is making no bones about its policy to censor its citizens' Internet content at will, claiming its oversight is for the good of the people.

According to a report by the BBC, China banned  access to You Tube after a video surfaced allegedly showing armed Chinese soldiers storming a Tibetan monastery and brutally beating, kicking and choking monks, among...Go to full story