The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Daily Mail breaks iPhone 4 recall scoop

Twatted by Twitter

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

The Daily Mail yesterday reported Apple may recall the iPhone 4. It based the story on “confirmation” from a Steve Jobs Twitter account clearly marked as a spoof.

While Twitter account 'ceoSteveJobs' has over one million followers, reporter Richard Ashmore overlooked a vital piece of information prominently displayed in the account profile: “Of course this is a parody account.”

The spoof Steve had Tweeted “We may have to recall the iPhone. This, I did not expect.”

The paper has since removed the article without explanation.

Oops

The gaffe was spotted by NextWeb and the Media Blog, among others.

Pity the poor papers.

When they're not mining Twitter for non-news, they're reprinting Wikipedia entries as fact. When Ronnie Hazlehurst died all but a couple of newspapers and TV channels relayed a bizarre factoid that he'd come out of retirement to record a hit record with S Club 7 – a fact inserted by a prankster. Among the professionals who fell for it were The Guardian, BBC News, the Times and the Independent.

And business guru and WiReD magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson showed how its done: large chunks of his book Free were lifted from Wikipedia, blogs, corporate websites and other published sources. ®

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Fake Steve Jobs

He makes more sense that the real one.

5
0
Anonymous Coward

Spot the Difference

Q. What's the difference between this and every other story in the Fail?

A. The hacks didn't know this one was made up.

3
0
Anonymous Coward

No, no, no and no again

The Dailymail make up stories so they can get the expected reaction form their readership which keeps them buying the paper.

A bit like El Reg, sometimes it's not worth reading the comments because you already know what they are going to be.

3
0

More from The Register

 breaking news
Pttow! Ofcom kicks hams out of MoD bands
Geet off my land, you, you ... 'secondary user'
 breaking news
Now you can use your phone instead of your wallet at the ATM, too
Blimey, these little paper towels out of the vending machine are really expensive
 breaking news
UK.gov's £530m bumpkin broadband rollout: 'Train crash waiting to happen'
Whitehall whispers of damning watchdog report next month
Google launches broadband balloons, radio astronomy frets
A careless Loon could blind the square kilometre array
 breaking news
MySpace zaps millions of teens' tearful rants, causes wave of angst
'Your crappy redesign SUCKS, I wanna read my blogs' screech users
 breaking news
Microsoft Office 365 on iPhone NOW: No, we're not making this up
Word, Excel, Powerpoint for your pocket-stroker
 breaking news
EU signs off on eCall emergency-phone-in-every-car plan
GPS and a mobe in every car - do you suppose the NSA would fancy that?
 breaking news
White Space wonga time: White House tips $100m into next-gen comms
Empty frequencies right place for tomorrow's mics, phones and fridges