Boston Herald Prints My Fake News as Real News

On Sunday, HuffPo published my story, Cheney Challenges Hillary to Hunting Contest.

The Boston Herald, apparently believing the story to be true, published it as a straight news story. Read the account of it here.

The Herald, realizing that it's bad to publish fake news as real news, published this highly understated correction (after pulling the story off their website):

An article in today's Herald regarding comments purportedly made by Vice President Dick Cheney was inaccurate and should have noted that it was based on a blogger's satire and was not provided by the Associated Press.

Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com. He is the host of "Countdown to '08" at the 92nd Street Y on Tuesday, May 13 at 8 PM with his special guests Calvin Trillin (The New Yorker), Susie Essman (HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm) and Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, MSNBC). For tickets, go to 92y.org.

Comments

[Observer1]

Borowitz:
I love a good joke. And I can laugh at it just as loudly knowig its a joke if it well written.
All your articles should be headlined " Satire with Andy Borowitz"

In todays world, I don't have time to read a whole article and then check your biography
to find out that you write satire.
The Boston Herald of cource should not rewrite your commentary without checking.

But to me,HuffPo is irresponsible. I remember the last turkey scandal, I lost a lot of meat.
Should I have sued, I would have looked foolish, but I would have won.

[Locksley]

Why is Andy - or anyone else here - surprised? Liberals live in Fantasyland anyway. Bambi and Thumper are in trouble and it's global warming's fault! Oh dear, what can we do to save them? I know, let's make a more expense, fuel called ethanol, that uses 5 times the energy to produce than gasoline, that greedy farm-corporations can make more money from by selling corn for energy instead of for food, causing food prices to rise at a rate similar to that which took place in those heady days under Jimmy Carter. The teamwork of liberal idiocy and capitalist greed is a winner, last united in efforts to retain Mexican peons in the US to form a lower class work force. Despite the Civil War, Democrats are sill the party of slavery!

[SolarPowerGuy]

Andy, you fooled me, too, with the first article of yours that I read -- "Hillary Refuses to Answer Paper-or-Plastic Question." Good stuff, my man! Don't let it swell your head too much. :^)

[heavyrunner]

Why not? It sounds just like Hillary, especially the last sentence about recoiling, the snake.

[OtayPanky]

I once had a possum that could recite the alphabet.

[richw23]

You've fooled me a few times, but I've always caught on. I'm not surprised however - I'm not sure how much they really read. I particularly love lead-ins that get the story wrong because they weren't paying attention when they did the lead in. Some of the stuff that gets read off the wire on the local news makes no sense whatsover - or maybe it's not straight off the wire and the 'news' writers get ahold of it. First - punch, second - alliteration, third - put it on the teleprompter.

[conned]

Well, to be fair; that is exactly what passes for real news nowadays. Even it its not true, based upon the media's journalistic standards, what's the difference? It still serves the same purpose as all the other stories designed to distract the public's attention away from things that actually matter. I see no need for a retraction.

[Nonamnesiac]

I hope you got royalties and made them buy My Wall Street Journal.

There was more truth to the Herald article though, than to Hillary's "Bosnia" description of her "Little House on the Prairie" upbringing.

[RuleofLawNow]

MSM keeps up the great work. Consistent refusal to insist on systematic fact checking and rigor in business of journalism is now becoming so silly as to be funny.

[live by the golden rule]

No harm done, in contrast to the effect of everyone printing whatever fictions Cheney promoted about Iraq starting in August 2002. So used to reporting outrageous comments by him without fact checking, it's hard to stop.......

[TheKat]

"We were bamboozled," Herald publisher Kevin Convey told Boston Daily. He explained that the item got picked up as straight news in Google, and was folded into unrelated wire reports from the AP, and appeared online and in the print edition. (Actually this linked to Boston Magazine's site.)

I live in Boston. I am not surprised. Still, doesn't everyone know who you are? Maybe we should sit down and map out a public relations stomp through the city. . . anyone?

[cktirumalai]

Automatic (that is, unthinking) responses may be found in every area of life and work. Would that they were all as quickly recognized and corrected as this one.

[PauCK]

I bet Orson Wells knows how you feel !

[Kungfublood]

I know of an out of work former attorney General they can take with them!

[Dave01]

Yep. I also know a disbarred lawyer and Impeached President to boot.

[Economike]

At least this time they realise there printing fiction. Now if they start to realise anything they quote Cheney or Bush as saying is also fiction we might be off to a good start.