Faking Fakers That Fake
The latest episode of Cheap Ass Gamer's CAGcast podcast featured a segment where host Cheapy D railed about all the rumors originating on video game forums that make their way to gaming blogs as legitimate news (this starts around the 50:48 mark if you want to listen for yourself - thanks to cloudandtidus on LJ for the info). He complains that since online game journalists are paid by the post and typically have a quota, they have an incentive to post rumors, no matter how dubious the source. Then co-host Wombat makes the following proposal (transcribed as best I could):

Wombat: This is what I think, I think our listeners need to do. I think they need to post things in our forums (...) that, that are complete bullshit, and see if it gets picked up by the blogs (...) And if someone gets picked up, I think you should send them a free game.
(some chuckling)
Wombat: A free game of their choice.
Cheapy: Yeah, I will do that. Well, okay (...) I'm not gonna encourage that, but Wombat will.
Wombat: (...) That's fine, I'll arrange the contest, you'll pay for the prize. So what you need to do is you need to go into the game forums on Cheap Ass Gamer, and post something that is completely made up. Now if one of the three major blogs - we'll say Joystiq, Kotaku, and Destructoid - if they post it as legitimate news, then - Cheapy (...) if you make two, we wanna say two of the three?
Cheapy: Any.
Wombat: Any one of the three, you will get a free game of your choosing from Cheapy D, of a $60 value or lower.
Cheapy: Or if you get it to hit on Digg. Actually, no, I'm against this contest, so you have to say that, Wombat.
Wombat: Or get it to hit a lot on Digg.

So, with the contest in place, CAGcast's listeners start posting all manner of fake rumors. One such rumor is desz's "XBOX's New Name?". It's notable that even the earliest few comments on the post strongly hint at its fakeness, but, as if proving Wombat's point, several well-known gaming/tech blogs do pick it up. Among them are Xbox 360 Fanboy (correction since appended) and Gizmodo (correction since appended), but some of the biggest butthurt came from Kotaku.

Some of Kotaku's readers picked up on the "bullshit contest" entry right away, and the post was ETA'd as follows:

UPDATE: It appears that this rumor story could be CAG throwing their credibility out the window as part of a contest. Kotaku''s decision to run rumors is always based on the credibility of the site and the information contained within it. In the past CAG has proven to be a reliable site, having broken a number of stories through apt reporting. It appears that may no longer be the case.

Meanwhile, the original poster of the piece, Brian Crecente, further defends his initial decision to report on the "rumor":

@Ryguy226: It appears, I dont listen to their podcast so I dont know for sure, that they offered a game to the first person to come up with a fake story that a blog picks up.

Quite a few sites picked it up, including us, fanboy, Gizmodo, engadget, but to my knowledge we all pointed out that it was a rumor and left it to our readers to decide on the source's credibility.

JP05 points something out:

"In the past CAG has proven to be a reliable site, having broken a number of stories through apt reporting. It appears that may no longer be the case."

Those are some harsh words, aren't you guys buddies? You gotta admit, the way the internet eats up everything, this is pretty funny. Can't wait to hear the response on their next podcast.

@Brian Crecente: It's blogged by normal users, that would be equivalent to letting everyone on Kotaku blog and to take what they say seriously. If it wasn't posted by Cheapy, Shipwreck, or Wombat, why would you even bother looking into it?

To which Crecente responds:

@JP05: It's not funny at all. Cheapy and his crew asked his readers to promote a lie on the site. How do I know they wont do it again. I don't have the time, or the inclination to listen to all of their podcasts to make sure that the stories that run on the site are valid.

This is called poisoning the well.

He later makes an attempt to compare blogging to to newspaper reporting:

@geminibros: So would it be credible for a newspaper to run a fake story and then point and laugh at all of the other newspapers that picked it up because they trusted them?

Here's another exchange:

spiderweb1986: If you'd taken thirty seconds to look at the user's posting history, he's made a whopping FOURTEEN POSTS on the site...and they're all in the podcast discussion, off-topic, or trading forums, or contest threads. Shouldn't that have made it clear that he's not one of the people who breaks news on the site?

Brian Crecente: @spiderweb1986: So a first time poster has no credibility?

spiderweb1986: @Brian Crecente: If I were running a site like Kotaku...no, they wouldn't. Given that it takes a minute or two to create an account, it'd be much too easy to create an expendable account and post something that MIGHT be credible to watch this happen all over again.

They may have credibility, but I'd wait for them to prove themselves until I post an entry about it on the front page of my site. Otherwise...well, if Kotaku policy is to start posting rumors from random new accounts on video game message boards, you're going to be running a hell of a lot more rumors.

Meanwhile, over at CAG, many lulz are had and at least one person is pissed.

ETA: Cheapy D speaks about the whole kerfluffle.