How does the Boston Globe react after publishing a bogus report based on a satirical news account? By scrubbing the online version of the page and replacing it with a 404 error.
Unfortunately for the Globe, National Review Online managed to grab a snapshot of the page, which appears after the break.
NRO’s Andrew Johnson notes that the phony report — that New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman had filed for personal bankruptcy — appeared in The Daily Currant, a satirical news website similar to The Onion.
In fairness, the author of the article at Boston.com (who writes under the byline “Prudent Investor”) didn’t fall directly for The Currant article, which he pulled from an Austrian business magazine called Format that had taken the bait earlier. To Prudent Investor’s discredit, It is nevertheless incumbent on a journalist to verify a secondhand source, so the egg on the face remains.
In any case, it is fairly classless of the Globe to replace an article published under embarrassing circumstances with a “missing page” error instead of owning up to its mistake.
The Daily Currant meantime added a big notch to its belt last month when it ran a piece claiming that Sarah Palin was joining Al Jazeera as a commentator in order to “reach millions of devoutly religious people.” One columnist who was taken in by the fake news report was the Washington Post’s Suzi Parker, who gleefully reported that the “once-upon-a-time darling” of FOX News Channel had joined the network, adding, “Ironically, Fox News recently called Al Jazeera ‘an anti-American terror mouthpiece.’”
Related Articles
- WaPo contributor Suzi Parker falls for fake Palin-joins-al Jazeera story
- Egg-on-face alert II: TIME magazine reports satirical Palin quote as legitimate
- The national anthem deserves better than Christina Aguilera
- Egg-on-face alert: Rachel Maddow gets had; treats satire as actual news
- Schumer: Beyoncé has not apologized to me for lip-synching National Anthem (Photos)
- Tracy Morgan on TNT: “Sarah Palin is good masturbation material” (Video)
- Tracy Morgan doubles down on Palin-as-sex-object comments
- Bill Maher hits new low in Palin attack: Calls her “c”-word
- NOW roasts Bill Maher’s chestnuts for tasteless Palin slur