Running Down a Rumor

It was a spectacular news story, the kind that in more innocent times used to be called a "scoop." The Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev was coming to Boston to be treated for leukemia, or so announced the Boston Globe earlier this month. Trouble was, the Russian leader never showed up. Last week it became clear that the Globe had been the victim of another grand old journalistic tradition: the hoax.

To fool a first-rate newspaper like the Globe, a hoaxer has to create a story that does not seem entirely implausible. In the case of Brezhnev, there had been rumors out of Russia for weeks that the Communist Party boss was sick (see EUROPE). As it happened, the hoaxer, who is still unidentified, worked in the ideal setting to exploit the Brezhnev situation: Boston's renowned Sidney Farber Cancer Center. The hoaxer made up a fake admission schedule card for the Russian leader in the style used by clinic personnel: "L. Brezhnev. No wait. See Dr. Frei." Someone in the clinic saw the card and, apparently just to be helpful, called a Boston policeman and asked, "Did you know that Brezhnev was coming to town?"

As it happened, the Globe had a source in the clinic who spotted the same card and phoned in the startling information to the paper. The Globe was wary but then got word from one of its sources in the police department: Did the paper know that Brezhnev was coming?

After checking some more and getting no flat denials of-the report, the Globe front-paged the story, only to learn that it had been had. After tracing down the genesis of the hoax, Editor Thomas Winship admitted last week: "We got egg all over our face."

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