Thursday, March 29, 2007

The MSM's April Fool's Day hoaxes

Over at Slate today, Jack Shafer recalls some of the MSM's classic April Fool's Day pranks (e.g., the BBC's 1957 segment on the Swiss spaghetti harvest, Phoenix New Times' 1999 story about the formation of the "Arm the Homeless Coalition," PC Computing's 1994 report on legislative efforts to ban the use of the Internet while drunk) and offers an April Fool's Day defense kit. For example:

Shun the British press. The British tabloids make stories up all the time, but on April Fool's Day, everybody on Fleet Street fabricates. The Times used the day to run a spoof ad announcing an auction of "surplus intellectual property" -- various patents, trademarks, and copyrights. The Daily Mail announced the postponement of Andrew and Fergie's wedding because of a clash with Prince Charles' calendar. He was going to be butterfly-hunting in the Himalayas. The Daily Mail told readers that nuclear submarines were now patrolling the Thames.

Shafer also links to the Museum of Hoaxes' list of the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of all time. Has the Boston Globe ever pulled a stunt like these? Only by accident. No. 96 on the Museum of Hoaxes' notes that the price listed on the front page of the April 1, 1915 edition of the Boston Morning Globe was lowered from "Two Cents Per Copy" to "One Cent." The new price, Globe management discovered, was the responsibility of a mischievous production worker who had surreptitiously inserted the lower value at the last minute as the paper went to print.

Posted by Joshua Glenn at 11:35 AM

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