<<Print>>So in case you haven’t heard, GTV decided to declare former South African leader Thabo Mbeki dead based on nothing more than a fake news story off the web.
It’s astonishing that the national broadcaster would put a story on-air, about such a major event no less, without getting any outside corroboration. The story appeared on a South African website with the url t1meslive.co.za – a clever rip-off of the popular and credible site timeslive.co.za. But even reading the story till the end would have tipped them off to how fake it was.
There are hoaxes that can take in the best of us, but this is as amateurish as they come.