Breitbart falls for fake news (again)

I knew it was going to happen, I just wasn't sure who the suckers were gonna be. Well, step right up, suckers.

A satirical item published last week purporting that economist Paul Krugman had filed for bankruptcy has spread to Boston.com and the conservative website Breitbart this morning.

The item originated in The Daily Currant, a satirical news site. Austria's Format online magazine picked it up, and their report was subsequently cited by Boston.com. Then it spread to Breitbart.

Krugman himself says he knew of the original story last week, writing "I wanted to wait and see which right-wing media outlets would fall for the hoax."

Everyone can be duped by a fake story once in a while. I'm just impressed by the devotion Breitbart brings to the table. This also provides more fodder for my theory that conservatives have a difficult time grasping satire, though you would think an organization so devoted to faking stories themselves would have a better grasp of when someone else had faked a story.

As for the Boston Globe, they've got problems of their own:

Globe editor Brian McGrory tells Erik Wemple: 'The story arrived deep within our site from a third party vendor who partners on some finance and market pages on our site. We never knew it was there till we heard about it from outside.' The paper, he says, did 'urgent work to get it the hell down.' He adds: 'The idea that we'd have a partner on our site is actually news to me' and the Globe plans to 'address our relationship with that vendor.'

Sheesh.