indessed roscivs

The other day, I posted an article about a Japanese Poodle Scam, in which poor unsuspecting Japanese people were duped into thinking their shaved sheep were actually poodles. This story was reported by a number of reliable US sources such as Fox News … but it turns out that the scam might be a scam itself?

Turns out the story of the poodle/sheep mixup is a popular Urban Legend in Japan that makes its rounds every so often. The Japanese moviestar in question had simply repeated it on a news show as something she had heard about a friend, not a personal experience. Somehow the rest of the story got invented out of thin air and copied from paper to paper.

Reminds me of the time Fox News picked up a story from the “humor” section of another news outlet about how Muslim students were outraged at the presence of a ham sandwich and compared it to starving Somalians. They repeatedly stated (as you can see for yourself in the linked video) “We’re not making this up!” … which I suppose technically was true…

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.