Newspaper publishes made up celebrity news

Posted by Cynical Sarah on May 13, 2006

There’s not enough real news or gossip about celebrities to keep up with demand and several newspapers and other publications have been caught accidentally publishing satire mistaken for real stories.

“It’s gotten to the point where we need anything we can get on celebrities. It’s what the people want, and it’s what sells a publication,” said Seth Green, editor of Society Nag.

Society Nag was recently caught in a whopper of a lie when it published a news story about Britney Spears also going to Nigeria to give birth to the latest Federline spawn.

“The story actually came from Nigeria, so we thought it must be legit,” Green said. “It was coming down to the wire for press time too, so we didn’t do as much checking as we normally do to verify it wasn’t just some tabloid bunk.”

In this case, the story was completely false. Even though the Nigerian government had released some of the information themselves, the story was completely false and based on a crank call to the Nigerian government.

“We got a call saying Mrs. Spears wanted to come to Nigeria also and that a representative would be calling us back again to fill in more details,” said Albus Hambudi, Nigerian press secretary. “We were excited and told a few local media of the interest and suddenly there’s stories blooming all over the world about it.”

Unfortunately that small leak of information was enough to start a media frenzy around the world as publications scrambled to get the story.

“I’m ashamed to say we heard the rumors of the story and picked up a copy online off of a site that we didn’t bother to check the credibility of,” Green said. “The site turned out to be a spoof news site which had heard the rumor and made up their own version of the story.”

Rumor has it the site may have actually been the culprits in starting the rumor too by prank calling the Nigerian government.

“I guess that’s one way to make your own news,” Green said.

Society Nag isn’t the first magazine to pick up a fake story and run with it. Besides the tabloids, which are notorious for making up and exaggerating stories,  several magazines ran a story about Tom Cruise deciding that he and Katie Holmes should get married while sky diving.

According to the story, Cruise and Holmes would sky dive out of a plane with a Scientology minister who would help them recite vows during their plunge toward the Earth. They’d be taking the plunge while taking the plunge in a very alien type fashion that would help rid them of more thetans.

It turned out the story was yet another satire piece that had somehow made its way to the mainstream media.

“Sometimes you just can’t tell the real from the fake,” Green said. “Celebrities these days are doing all sorts of crazy stuff you wouldn’t think was real, but it turns out to be, and then the stuff that might be semi-normal turns out to be fake.”

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Tags: celebrity, humor, Satire

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