The Star was among several newspapers around the world taken in by a clever Internet hoax last week.
The paper’s irreverent weekend feature Exact Change, a weekly compendium of whimsical, silly and wacky stories, was duped by what has since been dubbed the “pimptress” hoax.
It started with a small Reuters news wire story that said a British woman published photographs on the Internet of her boyfriend wearing her underwear to get even for his infidelity. Exact Change ran the story of the vengeful girlfriend’s Web site under the headline Hell hath no fury …
However, the tale was fabricated by the London-based dotcom firm ucp UK. The company owns a text and photo messaging system and set up the fake Web site to promote its services.
Edward Orr, managing director of ucp UK, called the hoax a very effective campaign.
“We were taken aback by the fact that it spread so quickly,” he said in a statement. “We certainly didn’t set out with the intention of fooling the world’s media but we do hope that they appreciate the light-hearted manner in which it was intended.”
Orr said the hoax caught on like wildfire partly due to “humanity’s enduring fascination with public humiliation and good old-fashioned scandal.” He may be right because his firm reports the story ran in more than 20 countries.
Editor Libby Stephens is always careful about verifying material for Exact Change. In this case, “if it hadn’t come from a reliable source like Reuters, I would not have used it,” she said.
This highlights a growing global problem with misinformation on the Web. A recent piece in the American Journalism Review predicted Web hoaxes and e-mail scams will continue to damage newspaper credibility until reporters and editors are more careful.
Most hoaxes are similar to modern-day folklore known as “urban legends.” The “pimptress” hoax is similar to an urban legend about betrayed love, documented on the http://www.urbanlegends.about.com Web site.
In this legend, after a wedding toast a groom purportedly directs his guests to look under their seats where he has pasted a picture of the bride and the best man in a sexually compromising pose.
The answer to the problem is simple – journalists must take more care when reporting events from the Web.
Star researcher and librarian Rick Sznajder urges journalists to check out reputable Web sites that expose hoaxes and to verify information from many sources.
“It’s amazing, though, how quickly critical thinking goes out the window when confronted with the twin demons of time pressures and magical technology,” he said.
Yale researcher and editor of the Yale Dictionary Of Quotations Fred R. Shapiro said journalists should always be wary of information that is “too good to be true, too pat, too colourful.”
It seems a little more skepticism could have saved a lot of journalists, including those at The Star, some embarrassment here.
Reader Bob Yewchuk, like The Star, was initially unaware the site was a hoax and found it in bad taste.
“I find this entire piece disappointing, juvenile and quite vindictive,” he wrote. “Even a high school newspaper would not publish something like this.”
I agree the piece flouted the boundaries of good taste. Why would the paper find such a vindictive tidbit worth publishing, even if it had been true?
