November 2, 2009
“Nobody sued Axe for failure to attract a girl – when a funny work of fiction made real news”
For immediate release
New Delhi. When Indian news satire and spoof website Faking News published an article titled “Unable to attract even a single girl, frustrated man sues Axe” on 19th October 2009, little did it know that the article will catch the imagination of people all over the world. But what was more surprising and shocking was the fact that many parties mistook the article as being a genuine news report even though the source was called “faking” news.
Since its original appearance on Faking News, the article has travelled through literally lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of inboxes in India and abroad, with a bulk of them mistaking the article as containing true turn of events and individuals.
Apart from email forwards, the fake news has been reported as true news by many news based websites in India and abroad e.g. Ananova and The Daily Record in the UK and The Australian in Australia! These sources in turn have been shared widely on social bookmarking and networking websites like digg.com, facebook.com, reddit.com, et al. The story has also been broadcast on local FM radio stations in Dubai and Australia, assuming it to be a true news story.
As a result, the original news report of Faking News, aimed at bringing out satire and humor in the social life of India, has lost its purpose and is mired in unnecessary misinterpretation. The content of Faking News has been duplicated, without permission, across various blogs and websites in India, Pakistan, Holland, Sweden, Mexico, Japan, UK, Australia, Japan among others!
Fortunately one website from Finland realized that the news article originally appeared on Faking News and was a work of fiction, and it published the clarification for its readers. Indian business news channel CNBC TV18 also clarified this issue in their program Storyboard on 31st October 2009.
Faking News tried its best to contact the blog and website owners of these sources to apprise them of the fact of the matter, and since then some of them have removed the content. But the original article of Faking News is still getting circulated around the world as true news.
These mistakes, however they were committed even though the original source i.e. Faking News clearly mentioned the article as being a work of fiction, has left most people wondering if Axe could really be sued for its advertisements when techniques like exaggeration and drama were accepted norms in the advertising, media and entertainment industry.
Faking News appeals to the people in India and abroad not to get confused and misguided by the duplication of content of Faking News on some mainstream news websites and blogs.
Faking News also appeals to the website owners and blog authors to double-check the source of any content before they decide to duplicate it on their platforms.
The news articles appearing on Faking News are aimed at bringing out absurdities of daily lives of Indians through funny and imaginary news stories. A style that has been pioneered by the US based iconic news satire website “The Onion”. Let’s have a good laugh at ourselves!
Incidentally, there have been prior cases when news satire articles by The Onion were mistaken as true news, especially by Asian news sources e.g. two Bangladeshi newspapers had recently republished a fake news article from The Onion. This is for the first time when western news sources have been foxed by an Asian news satire source i.e. Faking News.
