NEW YORK: The New York Times, which famously insists on the accuracy of its reports, was red faced on Sunday after being fooled by a hacker’s posting of an online editorial under the name of ex-boss Bill Keller.

The editorial, titled “WikiLeaks, a Post Postscript,” was purportedly published over the weekend by the Times and in every way appears to be the real thing from Keller, who until last September was the paper’s executive editor.

It was so realistic that none other than the newspaper’s technology editor Tim Bilton posted the link on his Twitter account, calling the apparent defence of Julian Assange’s controversial organisation an “important piece.” Not so.

“There is a fake op-ed going around under my name, about Wikileaks. Emphasis on ‘fake.’ as in, not mine,” Keller, now a writer on the paper, tweeted to set the record straight.

Bilton followed up, tweeting: “I just deleted a tweet sent late last night that was from a fake NYT Bill Keller account.”

One of the few clues to the forgery was the web address of http://www.opinion-nytimes.com/2012/07/29/ opinion/keller-a-post-postscript.html, since the real website’s URL begins with www.nytimes.com.—AFP