Bill Keller was the Executive Editor of the New York Times for eight years. Today, he’s a full-time writer for the paper of record. And when he talks, people listen. In fact, it turns out people listen even when it’s not actually him talking.
Like, say, in this deviously clever and quite realistic fake editorial, in which a fake Bill Keller gives a fake rousing defence of WikiLeaks.
It’s a charming piece of deception; the voice is close enough to Keller’s (and even borrows some direct quotes from the victim, as AllThingsD reports), the background looks enough like the real nytimes.com that you’d be forgiven for missing the absent NYT favicon and the incorrect URL format.
And plenty of people did just that! Including journalistic notables from Salon, GigaOM and the New York Times itself.
Oh, and Anonymous bought into it too.
It took an all-caps tweet from Keller himself early this morning to put and end to the confusion:
Well played, mischief causers! I don’t know if you’ve changed anyone’s mind about WikiLeaks, but you’ve certainly made a handful of people feel foolish for five or six hours. That’s got to count for something. [Fake NY Times]