JUNE 29 - JULY 5, 2005
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
11
MEDIA
Pitch publishes false news story
BY ADAM LAND
aland@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
An architectural drawing of the new downtown Sprint Center arena.
A satirical article in The Pitch may not have been as obvious as the local news and entertainment publication would have hoped.
The free weekly publication released this week's edition with a cover story entitled "Rebel Hell." The article, which turned out to be a hoax, said that a couple of months ago workers digging in the new Sprint Center came across human remains. The bones, the article stated, were later identified by a University of Kansas history professor named Fletcher Gray. The secretary at the department of history, however, confirmed there had never been a professor by that name at the University.
Photo by Allison Long/KANSAS CITY STAR Sprint Center arena.
The article goes on to say that Kansas City officials were in a frenzy figuring out how to deal with this and a Confederacy sympathizer concerned about the discovery, whose "for-profit" organization is called the "Friends of the Confederacy."
ments in Guam and Puerto Rico."
Editors at The Pitch said they believed readers would realize the story was meant as satire and get the joke.
"We thought we put enough references in there that people would get it," Tony Ortega, managing editor of The Pitch, said. "Like live-ammo civil war reenact-
Although the article was meant as a farce, The Pitch did not label it as either opinion or entertainment. Ortega and C.J. Janovy, the editor of The Pitch, wrote the article under the pseudonym Cesar Oman.
With a second read, the ridiculousness of the article comes out. The University's fictitious professor was said to have written a book entitled "Rebel, Rebel, Your Face is a Mess: Hygiene in the Armies of the West, 1861-65," which is a reference to a David Bowie song called "Rebel Rebel."
The format matters in a newspaper if the reader is to take it seriously, said Charles Marsh, professor of ethics at the University's School of Journalism.
He said that satire could be allowed if it was packaged correctly, meaning that it should be stated or have its own section.
The University Daily Kansan published similar satirical articals last semester for its April Fool's Day edition on April 1, but took precautions. The Kansan printed a fake front page with satirical stories of the campus personalities and happenings.
Although the Kansan identified the front page with a disclaimer, "The stories on this page offer only inaccurate news from fake sources, welcome to the world
of make-believe," the paper still received calls questioning whether the false front page was true.
The Pitch describes itself as "the area's leading news and entertainment weekly," but Marsh was more interested in its mission statement.
"I think it increases the skepticism about the profession," Marsh said. "Maybe they're to entertain, but I certainly won't be looking at it the same way again."
Edited by Erin M. Droste
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