-By Warner Todd Huston
Remember that juicy story last week of the Chinese mistress that convinced her rivals and her lover to go for a drive? The mistress that then drove them all off a cliff in revenge for being dumped for one of the rivals by the lover?
Great story. It had pathos, humor, revenge and… apparently it never happened. The U.S. media picked this story up from the Chinese speaking media and ran with it last week but obviously didn’t do much by way of checking the accuracy of the tale. Turns out the Chinese “reporter” that wrote the story pulled a Jayson Blair — he made up the whole thing.
CNN repeated the tall tale, so did Time Magazine, as did the New York Daily News. Then AOL News repeated the CNN copy, as did a host of other outlets. Along with the U.S. media a bunch of European and Australian news outlets also picked up the false tale (Like the Telegraph, the Scotsman and the Calgary Herald).
What supposedly happened was a rich (and married) Chinese businessman that was finding it hard to pay for his five mistresses held a lascivious dance competition among the rivals to decide which one he’d keep. After the contest and the selection, one of the spurned girl friends convinced them all to take a last drive together which supposedly resulted in a drive off a cliff in an effort to kill all involved.
The spurned woman heard around the world, however, turns out to have been a fabrication by Chinese writer Yi Lei from the Peneinsula Metropolis Daily in Shanghai.
Once again we see the Old Media running with a story without having performed the requisite due diligence of a good reporter. What, Who, When and where was covered. But having more than one source to assure veracity was sadly neglected.
Looks like this Chinese Jayson Blair fooled the world.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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