Last weekend I met professional fraudster Alan Abel at a conference in which he regaled the audience with tales of tricking daytime talk shows as well as the nation's top news media with stunts such as a "sex Olympics" and campaigns against animal nudity, among many others.
Andrew Adam Newman in The New York Times today reports that corporate hoaxers such as shoe merchant Zappos don't even have to try to trick the media any longer, CNN's Anderson Cooper picked up their online video campaign "World's Fastest Nudist," off the Internet.
Worse, a reporter for a regional paper in New York City actually ran an interview in character with the actor playing the nudist.
On Oct. 9, The Park Slope Courier in Brooklyn (part of Courier-Life Publications, a unit of News Corporation) published an interview with the naked runner. The interview was conducted over the telephone with Mr. Overstreet, who stayed in character and told the reporter, Gary Buiso, that his name was Donnie Montero and that last year in Barcelona, Spain, he won the World Nude 10K race, which does not exist.
The reporter requested the interview through the character’s Twitter account, fastestnudist, according to Agent 16. Informed that he had been misled, Mr. Buiso declined to comment and referred questions to Kenneth Brown, editor in chief of Courier-Life Publications. Mr. Brown did not return messages seeking comment.
Frankly, making such a big deal of tricking the Park Slope Courier seemed like a cheap way to mention News Corp. in the article - as if this story made it on Fox News or in The Wall Street Journal - but still.
Despite our reputation for playing with the truth, most PR people are scrupulously honest (or in our weaker moments, scrupulously willfully ignorant) because our reputations with the media are essential to staying employed. Nonetheless, I've often been surprised at how little reporters - particularly those below the top tier of journalism - actually check what we're telling them. Some stories - like this one - may be too good to check but more often too hard to check comes into play as well.
Oh, and the Times shouldn't be too smug about this. Alan Abel carries a laminated clipping of his obituary from that paper around with him.
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