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South Asian Film Festival in Goa from Fri (June 27) to Mon (June 30) At Kala Academy, and ESG, Panaji, Goa http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2008-June/076384.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 Jun: Reuters. Excerpts: You would think a press release about a German Nazi war criminal named Johann Bach being caught in the jungles of Goa after trying to sell a stolen 18th-century piano would be worth double-checking. Nonetheless, the press release has been regurgitated on the front pages of Indian newspapers citing Perus Narkp as the source. Perus Narkp, a not especially Germanic name, is an anagram of Super Prank. The organisations motto is Eht rea enp cabk skripc another anagram: The Pen Pricks are back. Pen Pricks is a blog skewering the Goan press 440 words. http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/109266.html It is not just Indian newspapers that fell for the hoax BBC monitoring service forwarded it and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency among others Full Text of Reuters article: June 30th, 2008 Indian newspapers fall for baroque Nazi war criminal hoax Posted by: Jonathan Allen Tags: Critical Eye, hoaxes, India, media You would think a press release about a German Nazi war criminal named Johann Bach being caught in the jungles of Goa after trying to sell a stolen 18th-century piano would be worth double-checking. A reconstruction of the head of 18th-century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who is not known to have visited Goa. Nonetheless, the press release has been regurgitated on the front pages of the Deccan Herald and the Indian Express and inside the Telegraph, citing Perus Narkp, the intelligence wing of the Berlin-based German Chancellors Core (sic), as the source. Perus Narkp, a not especially Germanic name, is an anagram of Super Prank. The organisations motto, printed at the top of the press release, is Eht rea enp cabk skripc clearly not the language of Goethe or Virgil, but another anagram: The Pen Pricks are back. The Pen Pricks, who run a blog skewering the Goan press, promised readers on Sunday they were about to break a big, Big, BIg, BIG story. It looks like they succeeded. Still, it should not take pranksters to remind us that gullibility is a dangerous flaw in journalism. It takes Google only 0.13 seconds to establish that the Marsha Tikash Whanaab concentration camp at which Bach was apparently posted does not exist. The Express reporter, at least, telephoned the German embassy and Indian police for comment. The fact they had no idea what the reporter was talking about did not deter publication. Only the Times of India gave even a hint that it smelt something fishy, but ran a story all the same. (I dont want to seem like Im recklessly throwing stones in a glass house: no organisation is immune to occasional lapses in journalistic perfection, as readers of the Reuters blog Good, Bad, and Ugly may be aware.) I asked Ramakrishna Upadhya, a senior editor at the Deccan Herald, what might have gone wrong. We all believed that it was real because it had so many details, he said about the press release. They should have been cross-checked, he added. He said he is investigating what happened, and that the paper will run a correction if necessary. An official at the German embassy in New Delhi very politely said they were looking into what happened but considered it too soon to declare it a hoax. I have tried to e-mail the Pen Pricks. Ill let you know if I get any response. Hopefully this was a singular blip and from now on we can once again believe every word we read in the press. ================================ Goa piano thief found to be Nazi war fugitive 29 Jun: The Telegraph (Calcutta). Johann Bach, an 88-year-old German trying to sell a stolen 18th-century piano in Goa has turned out to be a Nazi war criminal on the run. He allegedly oversaw the killing of 12,000 Jews and was arrested on Friday on the Goa-Karnataka border He had fled Germany after World War II and settled in Argentina, then Canada and Bulgaria before settling down in Goa two years ago 454 words. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080630/jsp/frontpage/story_9482062.jsp