"Chasing the Source" Media Watch Hilarity

After a tip off from my good college Lano I found myself on the Media Watch website and then later that night watching Media Watch on ABC2. To my intense enjoyment there was a story about a "credible news source" who had been reporting on the U.S republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

It seems the Sydney Morning Herlad had some revealing insider quotes from a direct source in the republican party, however, as one would expect this was not the case and the real source turned out to be ABC and Triple J's The Chaser! Chris Taylor of The Chaser(pictured left) was "delighted to see The Chaser finally being recognised as a serious news source." In the chaser's feature section they had the weekend before they had said "Palin spends $230,000 on emperor's new clothes... It doesn't matter that Palin's costing us a fortune for her wardrobe," one campaign insider said. "What matters is that she's costing us the election." The next day in it's world section the SMH quoted the mock source from the Chaser's feature the day before.

It seems that this is not uncommon amoungst some of australia's top news papers. Not long ago that Melbourne Age ran a front page stroy on James Hird making a come back to AFL football, even producing a fake front page so that "their competitors wouldn't get wind of the scoop" (N Walker, Crikey). Hird quickly denied the story saying that the claims he would return to AFL after one season of retirement was "totally ludicrous" and was quoted saying "I was totally shocked to see the story. I can't believe the story ran the way it did. Making an AFL comeback is definitely not in my plans I'm now 36 and my footy days are well and truly over."