EXPERIMENT #2: KENNY ROGERS

Enter WTF-TV.com and the Kenny Rogers Prank.

The key ingredient in our follow-up prank was Fark.com, a well-known site continually updated with links to amusing and unusual news stories. Morning DJ's and journalists around the world liberally help themselves to articles posted at Fark, rarely crediting the source. We guessed that a single link from Fark would make our fake Kenny Rogers story spread like ... well, like Kenny Rogers' waistline.

We created the entire site in just under a day, planting all sorts of clues that the story was a total sham:

• The city of "Hazelton" is never mentioned to be in any particular state;
• There is a special promotion for "Choir Boy Idol" at the local arena;
• The name is WTF-TV! I mean, WTF is up with the media not picking up on WTF?

We even included a page on the site where we confessed that the site was a prank. We intentionally left the WHOIS records open and available, as the goal of our prank was to show how easily the mainstream media will pick up on a sensational story. We submitted the article to Fark.com as a real story, and it was linked that day. The result?

MSNBC. ABC News. The Associated Press. Radio stations across the nation. All of them falling for it hook, line and sinker. As a sample of some of the coverage the fake Kenny Rogers story received, here's the ABC News Radio broadcast from the morning of November 30, 2004.

Bottom line: our experiment in journalistic integrity was a rousing success, which is depressing. But boy, was it fun.

We had successfully beguiled the national media into believing that a country music star would be at a book signing (does he even have a book?) where his bodyguard leveled 19 people, so now we had to do something even MORE ridiculous and unbelievable. And that led us to this week's little stunt.