Nice synopsis here of the president of facebook hoax that was bought hook/line/sinker by huge swaths of the French media. Let's not pick on the French press too much; the media in general can be pretty susceptible to hoaxes, especially ones fronted by presentable and articulate people.

It strikes me there often are some common elements about why a hoax gets traction in the media.

• It has numbers or statistics - reporters in general do not do well with numbers. For the record, neither do PR people, in general. :)
• It tracks a trend - in this case social media - that is buzzworthy, not super well understood (see coverage of Second Life as other example).
• The snowball effect happens quickly (aka the fear of being scooped is alive and well).

I'm sort of surprised that Facebook didn't jump on this sooner...

email digg delicious live it!