When Jayson Blair got a job writing for The New York Times, he was a young man, straight out of college. He advanced quickly, despite frequent complaints about the quality of his work, becoming a full-time staff reporter in 2001 and getting promoted to the national desk in 2002. But in April 2003, a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News notified the Times about suspicious similarities between a story Blair had just written and one she had written a week earlier.

The Times investigated and concluded that not only had Blair plagiarized from the Express-News reporter, but that his entire career at the Times had been a "long trail of deception." They found numerous instances in which Blair either copied from other reporters or included fictitious details in his articles.

Faced with these findings, Blair resigned on May 2, 2003. On May 11, 2003 the Times published a front-page article detailing Blair's fabrications. The article referred to the scandal as "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper."

Following his resignation, Blair returned to college to complete his degree. (It turned out he had lied to the Times about having graduated.) A year later he published a memoir about the scandal, Burning Down My Masters' House: My Life at the New York Times.

On 3 June 2002, the Beijing Evening News appeared to have scooped its competitors when it ran a story alleging that the U.S. Congress was threatening to leave Washington DC if the city didn't construct a new Capitol building that included a retractable dome. The article said that Congress was even considering a move to a town such as Memphis or Charlotte if the DC city government didn't buckle under to its demands.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was quoted as saying, "Don't get us wrong. We actually love the dilapidated [old] building. But the cruel reality is, it's no longer suitable for use by a world-class legislature. Its contours are ugly, there's no room to maneuver, there aren't enough bathrooms, and let's not even talk about the parking." More >>>

Jay Forman wrote an occasional "Vice" column for the online magazine Slate.com. In it he often described various bizarre activities he had engaged in or witnessed over the years. For instance, one column probed the synergies between guns and liquor. Another discussed his short career in the pornography trade. In his 8 June 2001 column, he described his participation in the extreme sport of monkey fishing.

Monkey fishing, in Forman's usage of the term, was not a slang expression for some untraditional method of fishing for fish. Forman meant exactly what he said. He went fishing for monkeys. More >>>

On June 25, 1899 four Denver newspapers reported that the Chinese government was going to tear down portions of the Great Wall of China, pulverize the rock, and use it to build roads. American companies were said to be bidding on the enormous demolition project. Newspapers throughout the country picked up the story, but it eventually became apparent the news was not true. The Chinese were not planning to tear down the Great Wall. Four Denver reporters — Al Stevens, Jack Tournay, John Lewis, and Hal Wilshire — had invented the tale while sharing a drink at the Oxford Hotel in order to spice up a slow news day. A rumor later suggested that when the news reached China, the Chinese become so furious at the idea of Americans tearing down the Great Wall, that they took up arms against Westerners in the Boxer Rebellion. This rumor was not true. More >>>

William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York Journal, had a reputation for never letting truth get in the way of a good story. According to one famous tale, when hostilities broke out between the Spanish and the Cubans, Hearst sent the illustrator Frederic Remington to Cuba to draw pictures of the conflict. Finding that not much was happening, Remington cabled Hearst in January 1897: "Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return."

Supposedly Hearst cabled back: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."

It is doubtful Hearst ever sent such a telegram. The first report of it appeared in a 1901 book, On the Great Highway, by journalist James Creelman. Creelman was in Europe at the time the telegram was supposedly sent, so he either heard the story second-hand or invented it himself. Since he was known for exaggeration, the latter is likely. Hearst himself denied having sent such a telegram.

On February 13, 1875 the Chicago Times ran a story describing a fire in a local theater. It claimed that more than 200 people had died in the flames, and it published the names of 108 victims. In fact, there had not been any fire, which people would have known if they had paid careful attention to the headline of the story which read "Description of a Suppositious Holocaust Likely to Occur Any Night." The rival Chicago Tribune denounced the hoax, and reported that a woman had collapsed and become insane after seeing her husband's name listed among the victims. However, the Tribune admitted in the same story that this report was, in turn, a hoax.

On August 25, 1835 the New York Sun announced the discovery of life on the moon. It explained that the discovery had been made by the famous British astronomer Sir John Herschel, who had invented a new telescope "of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle." Over the course of the next week the Sun printed details about the moon creatures Herschel had supposedly spied with his telescope. These creatures included lunar bison, fire-wielding biped beavers, and winged "man-bats." The public was fascinated by the reports. Papers throughout the nation reprinted the Sun's articles. But over time, as word from Europe failed to arrive corroborating what the Sun claimed, people realized they had been hoaxed. For the remainder of the 19th century, the term "moon hoaxy" was synonymous with fraud. More >>>