NY Times: Our Kanye West Column Was Mistakingly Based On Satire, Included Fake Quotes


The New York Times and Kanye West seems like an odd pairing. But while one could possibly expect Kanye West to say something untrue based on completely bogus information, would it be a safe bet to say the newspaper of record would never find itself in the same situation? Apparently not.

Times columnist Joyce Wadler has found herself in some hot water after publishing a column that quoted Kanye West claiming his backside was just as nice or nicer than his wife, Kim Kardashian. The alleged quote came from a piece in the Daily Currant and quoted an interview from West’s “interview” with WGYN radio in Chicago.

NY-Times--Our-Kanye-West-Column-Was-Mistakingly-Based-On-Satire,-Included-Fake-Quotes

The biggest problem with this is not the fact that The New York Times is allowing Kanye West to grace its pages and website, but apparently, the newspaper is doing so without checking first to make sure that its sources are actual sources. You see, the Daily Currant is a satirical website, and it says so right on its “About Us” page.

The section of the Daily Currant article in question is as follows.

“I don’t understand why everyone is focusing on Kim’s booty…. Obviously I love her a**. That’s why I married her. But nobody has an a** like mine. I have one of the top three a**es of all time.”

“My booty is like Michelangelo level, you feel me? It’s like a sculpture. It’s like something that should be sitting in a museum for thousands of thousands of years. Kim? She’s got a nice a**. But it’s not at that level.”

“The media hates me. That’s why they’re ignoring my butt, and putting all their attention on Kim’s. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”

While one could argue that those words do sound very much like a Kanye thing to say, it simply isn’t true. The mistake resulted in The New York Times omitting the sections of the Daily Currant “interview” previously included in the column and issuing the following correction.

“Editors’ Note: November 22, 2014”

“An earlier version of this column was published in error. That version included what purported to be an interview that Kanye West gave to a Chicago radio station in which he compared his own derrière to that of his wife, Kim Kardashian. Mr. West’s quotes were taken, without attribution, from the satirical website The Daily Currant. There is no radio station WGYN in Chicago; the interview was fictitious, and should not have been included in the column.”

The correction comes around the same time that many news organizations had to run updates to a story quoting actress Lisa Bonet or a person they thought was Lisa Bonet, after a Twitter account purporting to be owned by the actress sent cryptic tweets about former co-star Bill Cosby. Her agent said the account was not the actress’s, and the account has been taken down.

[Image via Flickr Creative Commons]

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