Daniel Rubin: Don't be fooled: It's April 1

From the "Check the Date" Dept.:

"Global AIDS programs win $9 billion Publishers Clearing House Prize," the news release trumpeted.

Thursday afternoon, the release went on, Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Chaka Fattah are to accept a giant check on behalf of Congress - money that would put an end to waiting lists for AIDS treatment in Africa.

Good news, indeed. Too good.

There were clues: No spokeswoman for Publishers Clearing House goes by the name Yetta Smith. And the person who put out the advisory has the same name as an activist for ACT-UP, the AIDS awareness group. Then there's that part about Thursday's being April First.

Great cause, bad joke - another in a long tradition of media stunts intended to take in April Fools.

My favorites are the ones by the media, much frowned upon among serious journalists but memorable nonetheless.

I mentioned the bogus AIDS prize to Brian Davis, an old college friend who was in town Tuesday to broadcast the Oklahoma City Thunder's game against the 76ers. Back in the 1980s, Davis was anchoring the hourly newscast for WGN-AM in Chicago when a talk-radio host noted that it was April 1 and wondered on air if Davis had anything to report.

"So I rolled with it and said that the pope had just announced he was retiring to get married," Davis said. Didn't take long for the phone banks to light up. "The basic reaction was, 'How could you?' "

Generally, people expect their news media not to have a sense of humor. This would explain the consternation that followed one of the earliest April 1 broadcast stunts.

On this day in 1957, the BBC's Panorama television show aired a report about the great spaghetti harvest of Ticono, Switzerland. The announcer spoke with signature dryness about the favorite weather and disappearance of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, as the cameras showed busy Swiss farmers plucking spaghetti from trees and laying it out to dry in the warm Alpine sun.

Most callers took the piece seriously, according to the Museum of Hoaxes, a Web site curated by Alex Boese, who grew up in Glenside and built his site out of the detritus from his grad school dissertation.

By phone from San Diego, Boese said another favorite media hoax involved a Swedish TV broadcaster. On April 1, 1962, the country's sole broadcaster announced an innovation that would let viewers see its programming in color.

"All they had to do was pull any long stocking over their TV set," Boese explained. "You had all these poor people in Sweden pulling nylon on their sets. So they not only fooled people, but convinced them to do something ridiculous in the process. That's the icing on the cake for an April Fools joke."

Less knee-slapping were the annual gags played by one of Saddam Hussein's publisher sons. Uday Hussein owned the newspaper Babil, which informed its readers on April 1, 1998, that President Bill Clinton had lifted sanctions against Iraq. He hadn't. Maybe you had to be there.

One year later, Uday had them in stitches again, announcing that monthly food rations would include bananas, Pepsi and chocolates. They would not.

The Russian news agency Itar-Tass was a notorious prankster as well, announcing on April 1, 1996, that the parliament was debating whether to revive the Warsaw Pact. Agencies in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria picked up the report, and a few hours later Itar-Tass issued a retraction.

And equally flat fell the 2000 announcement by the Opinia newspaper in Romania that 60 longtime inmates were to be released from the Baia Mare prison. Expectant families rushed to the gates. Not so funny either.

After our conversation, Boese wasn't rushing to put the Publishers Clearing House stunt on his Top 10 list. "On first impression, giving money to an AIDS charity - that seems like a very good thing. So the joke is that they're not going to do it? That makes it not very funny. It's kind of a sensitive issue."