It has become ridiculously easy to prank the news media.

Between all the cable channels, talk radio stations, newswires, morning DJs, and blogs, our news is less trustworthy than ever. Come up with something ridiculous enough, and your idea can become instantly famous, even if it's not true. Wacky ideas continually spread through the blogosphere, and frequently are picked up by the mainstream news media, who often don't have time to check facts or verify sources.

Over the past few months, we conducted a series of experiments to find out what kind of half-baked ideas could we get reported as actual news?

EXPERIMENT #1: WILLIAM HUNG

One day, Bill and I were chatting online, when American Idol reject William Hung popped across the Fox News Channel (which I routinely watch because it's the funniest stuff on television today). I mentioned to Bill that I originally thought Hung's botching of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" was great -- but that lately, he had been wearing on my nerves. Bill replied that, one day soon, they'd find William Hung dead in a hotel room from an intentional heroin overdose, simply so his father can further his rock-star image.

Thus, we concocted the William Hung Heroin Overdose rumor, ran it on Bill's parody news site, and watched as the shit was tossed delicately into the fan.

The article was run as SATIRE, on a page covered with disclaimers that it was part of a SATIRE web site. Apparently, this did not matter to the entire continent of Asia, as news organizations from several countries picked up the article as real news and reported it to a shocked continent. We were flooded with email ranging from congratulations to death threats. The outcry grew so loud that it was eventually added to snopes.com, the official urban legend site. The reaction was not only unexpected, it was HUGE.

This got us thinking: if the media picked up on a story printed as fake news, what if we faked a REAL news website?