Newspapers appear to have fallen for a story which claimed a photographer narrowly escaped a 1km drop after leaping over two rocky ledges in the Grand Canyon.
Earlier today we reported newspaper claims that the man had jumped the 8ft gap, carrying his camera and tripod under his arm.
Amateur Photographer magazine then revealed that the story smacked of a hoax.
It had been revealed that what the pictures apparently don’t show is a connecting ledge just beneath the two rock formations. This means the man would only have risked falling a short distance.
The Guardian and Metro newspapers now admit they may have been the victims of an elaborate fake.
While some papers mentioned the connecting ledge, others didn’t. And this is not the first time the images have emerged, having appeared on the internet some time ago.
The Guardian’s news blog goes further this afternoon by suggesting that the pictures themselves may have been faked in the first place.
Neither is this the first time elements of the press have apparently been duped. Last year we exposed a story about meerkats taking photographs as a fake. It had been widely reported as fact by most of the British media.
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