April Fools!


Abstract:
Umm, I've never taken a class on journalism, but I have seen a movie about it. From that I was able to learn about "fact checking," which involves checking facts. Perhaps SI should see that movie. It was called "Glass" something. Or "Broken Glass." I don't know.

Body:
Apparently I'm not the only one who was able to pull of one of those I-can't-believe-anyone-would-fall-for-this pranks. As I reported on April 1st, MacDailyNews ran a bunch of obviously phony articles on April Fool's Day, including one about Tiger Woods becoming Apple's Mac OS X spokesperson. (Warning: MacDailyNews runs some pretty annoying advertising including pop-unders and audio flash ads.)

Well, while most websurfers said, "Ha ha," and moved along to the next joke on the Internet, someone at Sports Illustrated fell for it, and posted these Golf Power Rankings on April 5th. Scroll down to Tiger Woods, and you get this as part of his blurb: "Apple announced a partnership with Woods to promote the company's new operating system."

I took a look at the MacDailyNews story which reported SI's mistake, and saw their explanation for the author's name in the fake article: "Siddhartha Finch," who was apparently a character in a hoax created by Sports Illustrated. Priceless.

Posted: Thursday - April 07, 2005 at 07:12 PM          

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