Wednesday, Nov. 04, 2009

False story causes regret

Hoaxes are nothing new, but the story concocted by the Fort Collins, Colo., couple about their 6-year-old son in a giant helium balloon has several unusual angles.

I first learned about the story from a television report that the little boy was safe. "It's a miracle," the young male voice reported.

I understood why he might have said that; he probably had been following the story all that day, starting with the report that the boy had climbed into his father's weather balloon and floated away. Then the box reportedly holding the boy was not found when the balloon landed, and the lad was feared dead as a search was started. The boy was safe in the garage at home where he had been hiding.

After hearing, "It's a miracle!" I told my wife it was surely good news but not a miracle. Then I wondered out loud how soon the veracity of the story would be questioned. Other veteran newsfolk and alert viewers immediately sensed a hoax.

I should have been more suspicious than I initially was. Years ago, I was both the victim of a hoax and at the same time a perpetrator.

This scam happened more than 35 years ago on April 1 (the date has significance) in Champaign-Urbana, Ill. I was the young editor of The Courier, a daily newspaper published Monday through Friday afternoons, Saturday and Sunday a.m. The Courier was in a competitive situation, rare even in the 1970s for a community the size of Champaign-Urbana (folks in Urbana preferred Urbana-Champaign), home of the University of Illinois.

A well-known commercial photographer came to the newsroom of The Courier. Ed Dessen had with him an architect, and they showed detailed plans for a high-rise mobile home park in downtown Urbana, as I recall. The architect's plans showed a round building of six or seven stories with spaces to hold mobile homes that would be hoisted into place. The two had a "news release" announcement and a rendering suitable for publication.

At some point during the presentation, I happened to look at the calendar and asked if the announcement had anything to do with April Fool's Day. Neither guy specifically answered, to my recollection. But I knew. I think someone on the news staff inquired as to whether we had the story exclusively; that is, did the competition have the announcement? No, they had not been to the News-Gazette, but they would if we were not interested.

So we put the story on Page One with a drawing of the proposed high-rise mobile home park. I'm fairly certain the story included mention of the April 1 date and the nonresponse of the two men. I remember this every April 1 and wonder if the two really would have tried to impose their hoax on the competition had we turned them down. Had there not been a competing newspaper, would we have run the story? Mind you, I don't recall anyone on The Courier staff questioning whether we should run it, but I've wished I had exercised more maturity. I caught some flak, but from surprisingly few readers.

Perhaps The Courier readers saw it for what it was, an inventive April Fool joke. True, we violated no laws and caused no cost to taxpayers as did Richard and Mayumi Heene in Colorado. Their hoax evidently was a marketing ploy related to a reality TV deal. We didn't have reality television shows in the 1970s, and Ed Dessen probably wasn't thinking about marketing.

But he put one over on us and our readers, and in allowing him to do so, we toyed with the credibility of the newspaper. I'll be forever sorry I allowed that to happen.

Contact Schumacher, a member of The Sun News editorial board, at dschumacher@thesunnews.com or 443-2417.