In the wake of Gordon Lightfoot’s death and resurrection via Twitter and Canwest’s newswire, it seems like we should really be grieving for fact-checking. Journalism’s dramatic shift from investigating stories to manufacturing events ties in nicely with the shallow depth of research gained by getting your news from trending topics on Twitter.

While it is sad that it is becoming more difficult to discern truth from uninformed retweets, I can’t help but admire when comedians exploit how the media crowd-sources their facts.

In my opinion, Tangerinegate is the funniest example of a prank escalating to wonderfully absurd heights. Comedian, Robert Popper (creator of Look Around You and producer of Peep Show) often calls phone in shows as his man-child alter-ego Robin Cooper with surreal stories. During the height of the media’s fascination with Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s temper, Cooper phoned a London call-in show recounting a tale of how Brown threw a tangerine at a lamination machine during a visit to his workplace.

The tangarine story was picked up by The Financial Times, a BBC show, The Telegraph, The Sun, and, best of all, it was animated by Hong Kong’s NMA News:

Perhaps if Lightfoot’s fake death was animated by NMA News, it would have been less disturbing.