April 1 is a dangerous day to be a journalist or blogger. You’re never quite sure which stories are real and which have been made up for April Fool’s Day. But today is March 31 so we’re all good, right? Wrong, as the British newspaper, The Sun, found out to its cost by publishing a story about Google Street View that could have been completely invented.

To be fair to The Sun, it isn’t the only news source to have been duped by the “facts” of this case, with CNET, FOX News, and several television stations around the world rehashing the story as real. But is it? An American teenager who writes the bog, Idiot Forever, claims to have made the whole thing up and persuaded The Sun to publish on the strength of two emails.

The story suggests that a woman caught out her cheating husband by spotting her husband’s car on Google Street View, which recently launched in the UK. The husband had claimed to be away on business but was supposedly found to have lied when his wife saw his car, complete with “blinged-up hubcaps” parked outside a female friend’s house.

The Sun quotes “top media lawyer” Mark Stephens as the source of the story:

I was talking about the Range Rover case when another divorce lawyer came up to say his firm was dealing with the same sort of thing. People are getting caught out on Google. I suspect the husband’s lawyers will claim it was an invasion of privacy that will cost him his marriage and Range Rover.

Idiot Forever blogger Matt Platino immediately claimed responsibility for planting this story in the newspaper. He explains how he emailed The Sun twice, once as Sasha Harris, a supposed friend of the adultery victim, and once as Mark Stephens, a name chosen at random but which turned out to be the moniker of a well-known media lawyer.

The original story certainly seems dodgy. Where is the picture of this car supposedly parked outside a house it shouldn’t be? How did the woman know that the picture was taken at the exact time when her husband had claimed to be away on business? After all, Google Street View is anything but real-time.

But wait, the Idiot Forever story is hardly watertight either. The Mark Stephens email isn’t reproduced because it’s apparently too boring. Could this be because the real Mark Stephens wrote a 1,000-word article about Google Street View for The Times on March 26 which includes the story The Sun latched on but as an aside?

I smell something amiss here but who is doing the duping and who is being duped has yet to become clear. All I do know is that tomorrow is going to be a nightmare, as every April Fool’s Day always is.

Related:

Entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 7:23 pm under Google, Internet, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
Stumble It!