This picture was taken at a rock festival held in a small town you probably never heard of.There's story that leads the world news section on the stuff website: Skinheads attack 3000 at concert
And according to the story a 14 year old girl is dead.
In truth this is just a story of local interest, unworthy of the attention of AP from whom Stuff got it.
A small rock festival was briefly disrupted. There were eleven injuries requiring medical attention and twenty arrests. Not good but not earth shattering world news either. No dead girl or skinheads and without those elements the story just has no hook.
A local reporter reported scuttlebutt as fact - it ended up on the wires and AP rewrote it with their own spin.
And indeed the local reaction in the town of Miass where this happened is about the same reaction such events had they occurred in Hamilton, say. Dismay at rowdyism.
And the thing is a lot of what we have dished up as News is anything but. A few days ago the Herald reported a man had cut off his penis to avoid being deported from Spain. Did this really happen? I doubt it. It is just too good a story to pass up. The Herald doesn't say where they got the story.
I remember years ago being ribbed in France when a story appeared in one of their rags about a fellow who wandered the streets of Oamaru with a saveloy (explained as a large red skinned sausage) hanging out his fly. According to the story he had been arrested but the judge had ruled it wasn't against the law to have a saveloy hanging from your fly so he continued to do it to the continuing consternation of the good citizens of Oamaru.
Do you think that ever happened?
Stories from far off places that reinforce an agenda or are just plain odd are probably gross exaggerations at best or just plain not true.
And it is highly doubtful a Moldovan priest drowned a baby while baptizing him despite what you might read in the papers and blogs.
Was it a Jewish saveloy?
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