"What are you doing here?"

What are you doing here?

IN THE COMMENTS: Joe said:

Urban legend/joke. This story has run several times in the past years. Probably goes back decades.

I said:

But it's Reuters!

wgh said:

IMO, you have to question any story that spells it "dumfounded."

Pogo said:

The reprinting of urban legends as true stories by news organizations that supposedly run rigorous fact-checking tells you much about the sorry state that afflicts journalism.

Revel calls it "the triumphant cult of voluntary ignorance", staffed by "docile instruments of disinformation".

It exposes why Reuters, and the NYTimes, and CNN, and others should not be trusted in anything they write at all. And that is a terrible thing.

To be fair, the story is dated Jan 9, 2008. I picked it up yesterday because it was teased in the sidebar of another Reuters story.

Chip Ahoy said:

Ha ha ha ha ha X 1,000,000

I mean, très horrible

But this is soooo one year ago.

He's right about that.

^^^ + What Pogo said.

Museum of Hoaxes 1/14/2008, status undetermined.

Snopes messages 1/09/2008

Digg 1/10/2008

Actually, none of those links establish that it was a hoax, but they do show it's all very one year ago. The big lesson for me is: Watch out for sidebar teasers. But also, I wonder, where was I last January 9th that I missed this story? I try to keep up on current prostitution news. Oh, I see: It was the morning after the New Hampshire primary."I listened to you and, in the process, I found my own voice," said Hillary. Was there a Bradley effect? Obama had just unveiled a new campaign theme: "Yes We Can." Distracting, it's true. Still, this is an eclectic blog, and it was wrong to do post after post about the campaign unleavened by doings in the world of prostitution.