Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman -- goes bankrupt? Satire website The Daily Currant posted just that story, which was picked up as fact by a number of websites, including Breitbart News. Tipped off that it was duped by the fake news, the conservative site quickly took down its own reporting of Krugman’s not-real bankruptcy. Now the old link returns a “Page Not Found” message.
Breitbart.com ridiculed Paul Krugman for filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection in the since-deleted post, after just last month castigating a news outlet for running with a story from that same website. Breitbart.com editor-at-large Larry O'Connor tweeted, saying he "trusted Boston.com as the source for that Krugman piece, but they were duped by Daily Currant, therefore, so was I!"
Media Matters noted:
In his post, O'Connor jabbed Krugman for supposedly spending "$84,000 in one month" on Portuguese wines and "a dress from the Victorian period," and concluded that "apparently this Keynsian [sic] thing doesn't really work on the micro level." O'Connor sourced the report to a Boston.com post written by "Prudent Investor." The post by "Prudent Investor" sources an Austrian website, which reprinted the original Daily Currant story.
Just last month, the Breitbart team laid into the Washington Post when the paper's website adopted a satirical story about Sarah Palin from Daily Currant. In a post about the snafu, Breitbart blogger John Nolte ripped the paper for not letting "facts get in the way of a good Narrative." According to Nolte, if Post blogger Suzi Parker "had a shred of self-awareness, integrity, and dignity, she would have changed the headline to 'Too Good To Check,' and under it posted an essay about how shallow, smug, bitterly angry partisanship can blind you to common sense."
But when his website ran with a too good to check story about Paul Krugman, they merely deleted the post without explanation.
Then a truly hilarious ending to the Breitbarting of Paul Krugman, from Paul Krugman:
OK, I’m an evil person — and my scheming has paid off.
On Friday I started hearing from friends about a fake story making the rounds about my allegedly filing for personal bankruptcy; I even got asked about the story by a reporter from Russian television, who was very embarrassed when I told him it was fake. But I decided not to post anything about it; instead, I wanted to wait and see which right-wing media outlets would fall for the hoax.
And Breitbart.com came through!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go give a lavishly paid speech to Friends of Hamas.
He who laughs last and all...
John Amato: What a great birthday present.
