Satirical Irish news website Waterford Whispers News are well known for their funny, sarcastic and exaggerated news stories.
They managed to fool one of Germany’s biggest news magazines yesterday after publishing a story about a stampede in Lidl.
The fictional story had the headline ‘Dozens injured in stampede after second checkout opens in Lidl’. It also claimed that 30 people had been injured.
Focus, a well respected news magazine having taken the article seriously, reported a legitimate article on it. Their headline translated as “Because only one checkout was open, unnerved customers cause mass panic in Lidl store”.
Focus have since amended the article and informed readers that it was satire.
This isn’t the first time Waterford Whispers have tricked ‘real’ newspapers into falling for their stories, an article in 2004 about a rocket launching in North Korea went international.