What the North Korea, Windows 8, Andy Borowitz and The New Yorker Have in Common
According to The New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz, a potential North Korean nuclear missile test (that even has the Pentagon on alert) went awry this week thanks to an unspecified glitch in Windows 8. As sources in Pyongyang were cursing Microsoft and threatening (nuclear?) war against the software company, an outlet in China was picking up the story -- not realizing that The Borowitz Report is totally, hilariously fake.
The Guangdong-based 21st Century Business Herald, a daily with circulation of 762,000, rebroadcast the news on China’s microblogging service, Sina Weibo. The post has since been deleted, it seems -- the link is broken -- but not before it caught the eye of the South China Morning Post:
It’s the latest editorial slip-up in China in recent months -- back in November, the country’s state-run People’s Daily celebrated Kim Jong Un’s being named The Onion’s sexiest man alive with a slideshow of the 29-year-old leader’s best moments.
Still, serious questions remain. It’s not clear why the Business Herald would find the stalled missile test newsworthy -- if it were following the news at all, it would already know we've surrendered.
