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Thursday, May 29, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Basement Files: Errata

The New York Times was hit with a second plagiarism scandal this week when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg was suspended for using unattributed material. As the crisis in journalistic ethics widens, more and more newspapers of record are rushing to correct mistakes, large and small, that might heighten the public's growing distrust of the media.

"Inside JFK's Affair with Intern"

National Enquirer

May 17, 2003

In last week's cover story on JFK's shocking affair with intern Mimi Beardsley, we reported that the "lithe and beautiful coed was `servicing' the president while Special Counsel Ted Sorensen directed a voluminous spray of white hot urine onto the intern's tawny back."

In reviewing travel records, it now appears that Sorensen was attending an economic summit in Brugge, Belgium, during the date in question. Before departing, Sorensen's urine was collected in a heated beaker and used months later to humiliate an impertinent Bryn Mawr sophomore. But witnesses now say it was press secretary Pierre Salinger who demanded of the impressionable Beardsley that she "kneel before me and make wide your mouth." The Enquirer regrets the error.

"Laci Peterson's Agonizing Final Minutes"

The Star

April 22, 2003

In a world exclusive, the Star reported last month that Laci Peterson was STILL ALIVE when thrown into the icy waters of the Pacific by her cowardly husband. Although at risk of hypothermia, Peterson might well have lived had she not been "dragged into the briny deep by a giant sea monster, a creature described as half fire-breathing serpent, half razor-tentacled squid."

"Laci bravely pled for her life," said Francesco Gallegos, a marine biologist with UC Santa Barbara. "The beast seemed to regard her with his one horrid eye, a brief flash of pity washing over his gelatinous features, before the ghastly Leviathan pulled her slowly but inexorably to her watery grave."

While the quote is accurate in all respects, Dr. Gallegos is, in fact, attached to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, Mass.

"Giant Gorilla Adopts Kitten at Miami Zoo"

Weekly World News

June 4, 2000

Photographer Kevin Stafford has been suspended without pay pending an investigation into possible photo manipulation of Koko the Gorilla and her adorable, mothering embrace of the orphaned kitty. Stafford has already acknowledged Photoshopping human eyes into the sockets of Mr. Ribbons "to heighten the poignant pathos of this heartwarming interspecies adoption."

That's fine as far as it goes. More troubling, however, is Mr. Stafford's misleading and ultimately dishonest cropping of the photo to remove a savage and feral human/gorilla child from the frame's foreground. The News cannot countenance any attempt to hide from the public the horrific accidents of nature that dwell among us. An undoctored photo of the fur-covered toddler and his fearsome alpha posturing appears below.

"Carol Burnett `Flat-Out Cock-Crazy,' Say Friends"

National Enquirer

March 17, 2001

Carol Burnett's insatiable hunger for man meat is driving America's beloved comedienne down a desperate path of cock-crazed self-destruction, friends of the TV star said. "Last Saturday, Carol demanded that I drive her all the way down to Huntington Beach," said personal assistant Tracey Armstead. There, the aging starlet trolled Surf City's famous pier in search of hot-bodied surfer boys.

Adopting the surf ethic of "If It Swells, Ride It," Burnett accommodated "eight or nine jungle studs" in a four-hour sex marathon. "She definitely took on all comers," said Armstead, "and each orgasm was punctuated by her trademark Tarzan yell."

The Enquirer stands by the events of the story, but not its location. We've since learned that the shocking, sweat-soaked orgy actually took place in the lurid glow of the Bolsa Chica State Beach fire pits, some two miles north. The Enquirer regrets the error.

"A Loyal Companion"

The Star

Nov. 6, 2002

In this Page 37 ad for a Franklin Mint commemorative plate, a forlorn and dewy-eyed cocker spaniel stands vigil over his owner's fallen body. The advertising body copy for the stunningly realistic plate read: "Bubbles' beloved owner, the victim of a crippling stroke, lies prone on the living room carpet in this beautiful offering from Franklin Mint artist Chuck Pellmore. Note the detail in the delicately rendered woodgrain laminate TV tray. And are those human tears staining the muzzle of heartbroken Bubbles? So it appears. This wrenching tableau suggests that dogs remain a man's best friend even in death."

Pellmore now claims that the lifeless owner was felled by aneurism. Refund queries should be forwarded to the Franklin Mint.

"Civilization of Giant Lizard People Flourishing Beneath Manhattan"

Weekly World News

Oct. 10, 2002

Weekly World News was the first to "unearth" this shocking story of a bloodthirsty reptilian race living scant leagues beneath the earth's crust. We revealed that the scaly and cold-blooded mutants, some as long as 24 feet, were emerging from Central Park grottos to devour "untended infants, Graco strollers and all."

Noted anthropologist Eliza Simkins was the first person to set eyes on the terrifying lizard people when her team of scientists, using high-tech "gecko location devices," dared to explore the subterranean lair of horror. In our story, Simkins is quoted as saying, "I've never seen anything like it. In the darkness, all that shone were their red, soulless eyes. When we trained our flashlights on them, we saw their long, flickering tongues still collecting baby blood from their begrimed jowls. I still shudder at the image. It was like a nightmarish cross between Jules Verne and H.P. Lovecraft."

In a review of the Weekly World News' policy prohibiting snotty literary references that might confound our readership, it was determined that the quote should have read: "It was like a cross between a scary Hollywood movie and an even scarier Hollywood movie." We regret the error.