This video of a reporter getting his pants pulled down "on air" is going around as a "news blooper" today, even though it's definitely fake and possibly viral marketing for beyondcoal.org. It's managed to fool a lot of people, so props to whoever made it. Here it is, and then some tips on how to do it better next time:
Fake News Blooper Tips:
Tip 1: Make it short: real news bloopers are uploaded by viewers who get straight to the point and only show the part relevant to the blooper.
Tip 2: Make it more banal, and therefore believable: the pink shorts the reporter is wearing should have been regular old Gap boxers.
Tip 3: For the love of god, don't set your fake news blooper in New York or any other large city, where everyone knows the local news stations. Set it in the middle of nowhere so it would take work to look it up.
Tip 4: Don't make fake news bloopers. They're lame. If this does turn out to be viral marketing for the Sierra Club or beyondcoal.org, for example, people are just going to think "The Sierra Club made me feel like an idiot." And if you absolutely have to make a fake news blooper, at least give it a premise that doesn't sound like the result of an epic brainstorming session by a group of second-graders. Even though, as this week proved, the real ones often do.
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