A blogger claims to have duped journalists into
reporting afake storyabout a woman who used
Google Street View to find out her husband was cheating on
her.
An American teenager who writes the blog "Idiot Forever" says he
sent e-mails to The Sun newspaper from the woman's friend, and from
a media lawyer to back the story up.
The e-mails told them that a woman had allegedly filed for
divorce after catching her husband parking his car outside a female
friend's house on Google Street View.
He said in the e-mail: "Hey Sun, I need your help. One of my
mates caught her husband cheating by using Google Street View. He's
a pig. Also, this really shows how the addition of the Street View
is hurting people. I think this is a good story for you. Cheers,
Sasha."
The blogger says, "Note how I used words like 'mates' and
"cheers'. This lulls the Brits into a false sense of security."
The picture he sent with the story did not back it up, he said.
"I don't even know if the picture was of an apartment building. It
could be a commercial building for all I know. I just zoomed into
London (because that's the biggest city I know) and picked Victoria
Street (because Victoria Beckham is attractive). Then I looked for
some parked cars."
The picture was not used in
The Sun's story. The
blog post said, "I guess they just wanted to write a fun, juicy
story."
However,
Valleywag isn't sure that the blogger wasn't in fact trying to dupe
the rest of the media, by claiming he had put one over The
Sun.
Guess that leaves none of us any wiser as to which story is
actually the true version of events.