LATELY there was much amusement when a local English daily printed a story on strained relations between Gulf states. It was standard fare, dwelling on the KSA-Qatar rift that every now and then surfaces out into the open.
What was exceptional, however, was that it quoted a news story claiming that Harrod’s, which is owned by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, had banned the entry of Saudis and Kuwaitis. Clearly, this was evidence of a diplomatic spat going to the next level, and jibed well with whatever other research the author had done.
And it would have been perfectly fine had the source of the ‘news’, the Pan-Arabia Enquirer, not been a satire news site. I understand that it may have been difficult to tell from the story itself. After all, there may well be a Middle East analyst by the name of Bella Cockpit. Certainly, the ‘Qatar Consultative Assembly’ may have considered denying these countries a ‘luxury retail experience’.
Even the other stories posted on the site, such as ‘Al Jazeera to become shopping channel’ aren’t completely implausible, if one stretches suspension of disbelief to the point where it snaps into several pieces.
It’s not the first (and certainly not the last) time mainstream media has been fooled by spoof news. Back in 1934, almost every major American newspaper carried a story about a German pilot who had invented a flying machine powered by his own lungs. It later emerged that it was an elaborate hoax by a German magazine as an April Fool joke which had been picked by an international wire service.
Eighty years later, while it is much easier to check the veracity of a news item, it is also much easier for people to get fooled by such news. But forget about the incredulous Facebook crowds who’ll share without even reading (let alone critically analysing) the news in question, and take a look at mainstream news organisations that have also been fooled by their satirical second cousins. Why does this happen?
For one thing, the manufacturers of spoof news make it a point to have the stories sound as much like real news items as possible. The Onion, for example, is really good at this and regularly manages to fool people as was the case with a story titled: ‘Congress to leave D.C. until new capitol is built’. This was duly picked by China’s state-run Beijing Evening News which even attacked the LA Times when it reported on how the paper had been fooled.
But here’s the thing; with Congress shutting down the US government after a partisan hissy-fit, the story was just believable enough to run, at least for Beijing. Of course, the same cannot be said of the Chinese People’s Daily taking the Onion’s ‘Kim Jong-un voted sexiest man alive’, story seriously. Perhaps, as one wit remarked, the Chinese didn’t understand the “mysterious Western art of satire”.
Of course, Western media also gets taken for a ride fairly often, especially that bastion of fair and balanced coverage that is Fox News. The list of spoof stories they’ve taken seriously is a long one, including (again) the Onion’s ‘Frustrated Obama sends nation a rambling 75,000 word email’ that was picked up and run by its subsidiary, Fox Nation.
Closer to home, our very own Pakistani spoof news site Roznama Jawani’s story was also picked up by Fox Nation. This story claimed that the Council of Islamic Ideology had protested the use of padded undergarments, calling them the “devil’s cushions”. The story was quickly removed once the truth came out, but not before much smirking and sarcasm at Fox’s expense.
Roznama Jawani is now seemingly defunct, which is perhaps inevitable in a country where the reality is beyond the fevered imagination of the most skilled satirist. After all, how on earth would you parody the CII’s proclamations on DNA testing and child marriage? How would you spoof calls for a Taliban office or a safe zone? Or, for that matter the idiocy of calling on the terrorists-in-chief to investigate attacks carried out by an alleged splinter group?
So how does one avoid falling victim to this phenomenon? Well the first step is to use some sense, common or otherwise. If the story about a 250-million-year-old dinosaur egg hatching isn’t being carried on every major news site, odds are it is satire. If it shows a former ISI agent dressed in a Spiderman costume, you’re likely looking at a spoof. Oh, and if the tagline of the news site is “spreading the hummus of satire on the flatbread of news”, then by all means have a hearty chuckle, but just don’t cite it.
The writer is a member of staff.
Twitter: @ZarrarKhuhro
