On December 17 the Standard-Times of New Bedford, Mass. ran an alarming article about a university student who was visited by federal agents after requesting a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's Little Red Book. The story quoted two professors at UMass Dartmouth who said the student told them about the incident. The paper said it knew the name of the student but did not name him or even interview him because "he fears repercussions should his name become public." In reality he feared repercussions because his story was a pile of crap. A hoax.
As is the case these days, it made its way around the Internet before the truth was revealed. Even Senator Ted Kennedy mentioned it in a Boston Globe op-ed. And according to the Wall Street Journal, the Globe looked into the story but didn't write about it because they didn't find the kid credible.
The Standard-Times ran a lengthy corrective article the following week to reveal the hoax. As Rogers Cadenhead notes on his blog (we spotted this story because of a letter he wrote to Romenesko), the paper seems to blame everyone and take no responsibility for publishing the initial story. The reporter writes about how the student's story eventually started to unravel under intense questioning (only after the initial story was written), and how the tale "came at a perfect storm in the news cycle" due to the recent New York Times story about government surveillance. It doesn't mention the paper's failure to speak with the student prior to publishing the piece, nor does it offer up any kind of admission or apology. The paper also piled on again in its regular "thumbs up," "thumbs down" round-up:
Thumbs down for the UMass student who lied to professors and The Standard-Times about being visited by federal agents after he ordered a copy of Mao Tse Tung's Little Red Book through the inter-library loan system. This bogus story went around the nation and gave the public a false impression of our government at a time whenour government is under intense pressure to defend the homeland from terrorism and does not need the public to turn against it.
And thumbs down to you too, Standard-Times.
