TechCrunch has an entertaining story about a 28-year-old French con artist named Arash Derambarsh, who recently persuaded a bunch of Facebook Inc. users to "elect " him as the new president of the social networking company. The local press falls for it, and the huckster, sporting a natty suit and suitably square eye-glasses, is soon appearing on French TV and in print spouting inanities about his plans for the company. Il faut le faire. 

No doubt some in the blogopshere will point to the episode as yet more proof that the mainstream media -- lazy, ink-stained scribblers that they are -- have been hoodwinked yet again. Then there are those, like noted ethnologist Lauren Feldman, who prefers (hey, here's a novel idea!) to simply blame the French. 

To which I say, sure, the press, regardless of its flag, often reports in herds, leading to mistakes (Obama to crush Hillary in N.H., anyone?). This goes way back ... even to before Facebook was around. Online journalism, with its emphasis not only on speed but on circulating content as quickly and widely as possible, increases the risks for error. Then again, how reliable and accurate is the blogosphere in spreading the news? Fact-checking is virtually nil (how do I know Derambarsh is 28?), content and information is appropriated at will, stories warp at speed as they echo around the chamber. Meanwhile, the media get bashed for not moving fast enough to adopt new technologies and overthrowing the old, and presumably inferior, ways of publishing.

The reporters Derambarsh suckered are of course to blame. They were sloppy and, as Mathew Ingram says, perhaps reluctant to let details, like the truth, get in the way of a good story. If there's a major lesson here -- and I doubt there is -- it's the same one we've known since the cradle: People lie in all sorts of outlandish ways, so it pays to be skeptical. As for the quality of journalism these days, this incident is a reminder that the Internet, that glorious monster, is as useful in spinning fictions as telling facts. - Alain Sherter