New York Times Falls for Hoax Video

This week hasn't been a good one for big journalism. First we had news that the Los Angeles Times got tricked into falsely accusing Sean "Diddy" Combs of complicity to murder, now comes news of another paper getting snookered in a desperate quest to be cool.

Our story begins in 1987 with 80s pop singer Rick Astley and his song "Never Gonna Give You Up." Back in the day, the song was a worldwide #1 hit. Once the 90s began Astley's popularity declined until a few years ago when "Never Gonna" acquired a life of its own on the internet thanks to the practice of "Rick Rolling," a prank web users play on each other to mischeviously post a link allegedly relevant to the topic at hand which is in reality a link to Astley's cheesy video.

Flash forward to this past Monday. On that day, New York Times reporter Evelyn Nussenbaum gets word that a Washington state college basketball game has devolved into an impromptu Rick Astley concert based on the "Rick Rolling" prank. The proof? A video posted on the YouTube page of a web video comedian named Paul "PauLy" Fisher.

What more proof did you need than that? The Times rushed to print the story out onto the web after briefly contacting Fisher, not realizing that the guy makes parody videos. Unsurprisingly, Fisher did not tell the Times reporter that it was all fake. Nussenbaum's finished product is here:

Before the women’s basketball game at Eastern Washington University on March 8, as the Eagles of E.W.U. faced off against the Montana State Bobcats, attendees were greeted by a 1980s flashback.

Two men on the sidelines surprised the crowd by blasting the British singer Rick Astley’s 1987 hit song “Never Gonna Give You Up” through the gym, while one, dressed as a look-alike in Mr. Astley’s signature trench coat, lip-synched and mugged to the music: a popular prank known as rickrolling.

The stunt, which was also performed before three other basketball games and distilled into a YouTube video, provoked a variety of reactions. Many older spectators looked, by turns, puzzled or irritated. But the under-30 fans danced and sang, happy to participate in a rapidly spreading phenomenon with roots in their favorite medium — the Internet.

Gotta love it. After the word got out, the local Spokesman-Review newspaper caught up with Fisher:

"My intention was never to punk the New York Times," Fisher said. "My intention was to punk the whole planet."

The Times does cover the world.

"The lady (reporter) was really sweet. I didn't set out to make her look bad," said Fisher, who wants to be a film editor for a major studio. He may be on his way. As of Wednesday, his YouTube video had almost 400,000 hits, or "the size of a medium city," he pointed out.

Not too shabby. The Times really should've caught this one, but then again, we wouldn't have gotten the laugh so maybe not.

Hat tip: tracheostomy

Update 20:48. For more on what "Rick Rolling" is, see the Wikipedia page for it. Here's an excerpt:

"Never Gonna Give You Up" is a dance-pop song originally performed by Rick Astley. It was released as a single from Astley's multi-million selling debut album Whenever You Need Somebody, which was written and produced by Stock Aitken Waterman. The song was a worldwide number one hit, initially in the singer's native United Kingdom in 1987, where it stayed at number one for five weeks and was the best selling single that year.

It became number one throughout Europe and hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States on March 12, 1988. It reached number one in Australia in December 1987. [...]

The song's campy music video became the basis of an Internet meme known as "rickrolling". It took its name from an anonymous message board meme known as "duckrolling", a prank in which someone would post a blind link to a post, allegedly relevant to the discussion, that upon viewing would prove to be a non sequitur - specifically, an image of a duck on wheels. Similarly, in a rickroll a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the Rick Astley video. By May 2007[2] the practice had become widespread, and it eventually began to receive some coverage in the mainstream media.