http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/09/turd-eaters.html

Technically, you could call it media coprophagia.

A couple of years ago I was one of 4 bloggers, worldwide, who was taken in by that hoax, in my case for 1 evening. All I can say in my defence that it did not include obviously fake names as this did & that as soon as & became aware of it I publicly ackmowledged this & indeed reported on the continuing story.
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2009/08/warming-alarmists-hoax-redux.html

Still it looks like my journalistic standards match those of the Independent & since I have never practiced such a hoax, considerably exceed those of the Guardian.

On a more serious note what the comparison also shows is that in pure technical terms, errors can be found & corrected very quickly online whereas such corrections, even if there is a wish to make them, are belated & difficult to find in the MSM.

There’s a further piece coming on this.

I think the manor of the retractions speaks volumes.

This was particularly noticeable in the Guardian’s comments space; the commentators seemed to read the headline and then launch into their own pet discussion topics without really going through the substance of the article. I suspect it’s an off-shoot of the “I condemn this obscene film, which I haven’t actually seen” tendency of radio and television commentators to condemn a film, which they haven’t… well, you know.

To be fair, the underlying theme of the hoax – that the Tory politician in question was a div for comparing parts of the UK to the far more nightmarish murder hellscape of Baltimore – was sound. It’s just that all the aforementioned media outlets were so spurtingly desperate for something that reinforced their prejudices that they didn’t want to check to see if it was true or not.

I wish I could trademark or copyright the phrase “spurtingly desperate”. You heard it here first.