Arbiters of Truth at Play

Media April Fools' Day Hoaxes

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8934898
AutoresMoira Smith (0000-0002-6681-6534, autor de correspondencia)
Año2009
Volumen120
Número3
Páginas274-290
Fecha de publicación2009-11-06
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaFolklore (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0015-587X • E-ISSN: 1469-8315
EditorialRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00155870903219714
OpenAlexW2058010560
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas17

On April Fools' Day, journalists from every media take advantage of the occasion to pass off fabricated stories as news. While entertaining, these media hoaxes flout journalistic ethics and disappoint the public's expectation that the media are reliable arbiters of truth. This play arises from and dramatises the incongruities of the journalistic obligation to entertain as well as inform. Further, hoaxes uncover the media's role in the social construction of reality. They challenge commonsense epistemology by proving that fiction can be indistinguishable from fact, even when it is news. The world is a story we tell ourselves about the world (Vikram Chandra, novelist, b. 1961). Notes [1] All of these stories appeared in the mass media on 1 April 2005 in: The Otago Daily Times; Manhattan College Quadrangle; Virgin Group's Australian Finance Division; NPR news program “All Things Considered”; Wikipedia.com; Nature.com; and the Sun. All were included in a lengthy roundup of annual April Fools' hoaxes in Wikipedia (“Portal: Current Events April1, 2005”). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?curid=1675324); [14 March 2009]. [2] The folklore archives at the University of California Berkeley and the Wilson Folklore Archives (Brigham Young University), as well as my own fieldwork, document that the custom is alive and well in the U.S. Jochum Stattin (1996) found that the same was true in Sweden. [3] Twain wrote the story as a satire against the then contemporary mania for petrified man stories, and also to ridicule the local coroner, with whom he had a falling out. He also professed to be amazed that anyone believed this “string of roaring absurdities” (Fedler 1989, 44). [4] For reproductions of these doctored pictures, MacDougall 1940, frontispiece, opposite p. 8, and opposite p. 9. [5] A copy of the website printed on the 2 April 2008 contains no disclaimer; another printed on 13 June does. [6] Letter to the editor, Timaru Herald, 6 November 1995. The full text of these and other responses to the film may be found on Hight, Craig, “Forgotten Silver”, http://www.waikato.ac.nz/film/mock-doc.shtml; INTERNET. Accessed 14 September 2009. [7] In Redeeming Laughter (1997), Peter Berger argues that the comic provides a safe arena wherein we can glimpse alternative realities. Similarly, Elliott Oring, (1987) has suggested that disaster jokes challenge the media-dominated definition of the world

Art · Folklore · Hoax · Journalism · Literature · Media studies · Sociology · History · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · South Asian Cinema and Culture