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Spoof Times: 'All the news we hope to print'
Commuters in many US cities found out during Wednesday's morning rush hour that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had ended, at least according to a spoof of one of the country's top newspapers.
- AP
- Published: 23:54 November 13, 2008
New York: Commuters in many US cities found out during Wednesday's morning rush hour that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had ended, at least according to a spoof of one of the country's top newspapers.
About 1.2 million copies of a spoof of The New York Times, dated July 4, 2009, were handed out by the liberal pranksters the Yes Men. At first glance, the parody, which uses the Times' Gothic-style font on the nameplate, could easily be mistaken for the real thing.
The 14-page paper - which also announced the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for CEOs and a recall for all gasoline-fuelled cars - showed up in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington.
The activists behind the prank say they wanted to make sure the administration of Democratic President-elect Barack Obama keeps its promises.
It was paid for by small, online contributions "to maintain the pressure on the people we've elected so they do what we've elected them to do", said Wilfred Sassoon, a freelance journalist who helped create the paper with about 30 other writers, many from New York daily newspapers. The team even included three New York Times staffers whose names will remain a secret, Sassoon said.
On the Times' website, spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said: "This is obviously a fake issue of The Times. We are in the process of finding out more about it."
The lead story in the paper appears beneath the headlines "Iraq War Ends" and "Troops to Return Immediately". Another story declares, "Nation Sets Its Sights on Building Sane Economy".
The writers' political perspective is clear, from their twist on the Times' own motto "All the news that's fit to print" - "All the news we hope to print".
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