In the spirit of April Fool's Day, I decided to use a link I found from The Daily Beast on their Video Cheat Sheet section concerning an April Fool's prank played across the pond by the good people of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Fifty two years ago, BBC aired a fake news feature on April Fool's Day about a spaghetti harvest in Switzerland.
To add legitimacy to this broadcast, BBC convinced reputable broadcaster Richard Dimbleby to narrate the story and featured a family gathering what appeared to be an extremely bountiful spaghetti crop from the trees.
Audience responses ranged from outrage to inquires concerning how to purchase these amazing spaghetti plants. Apparently, spaghetti is considered a "delicacy" in Great Britain, which may somewhat account for the confusion on behalf of the BBC audience.
The question this broadcast raised in my mind on part of editing decision making was how this hoax would affect the network's credibility. We all know that the Brits have an interesting sense of humor, to put it mildly. However, all of the audience members who were reportedly "outraged" probably lost a small degree of respect for BBC. While this may seem ridiculous to some, one thing has been ingrained in my mind over my years in Grady: your reputation as a credible news source means everything. While I am all for having a sense of humor, perhaps it would have been prudent to use this material on another section of BBC's programming other than a serious news show. It would be best to separate legitimate news stories from comedy unless the spoof is explicitly dubbed as a farce of current events a la Jon Stewart.
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I agree with Margaret Atkinson, with regards to there needing to be legitimacy when it comes to news presentations. This is similar to the Halloween of 1938 War of the Worlds alien invasion, which caused the listeners into a "widespread outrage." Regardless of the seriousness of a legitimate spaghetti plant, listeners, viewers and readers should be very well informed of hoaxes before the program is aired or article published. Lastly, maybe the people of Great Britain should become more aware of April fools day!
ReplyDeleteGreat historical reference, Margaret. It's like my mother always said, "all you have is your reputation." Actually, my mother didn't always say that, but I'm sure she would agree that once you're credibility is gone, it's gone. And, that's our one great virtue as journalists.
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