China's homicidal net-addict bootcamps.

Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast

This week on my podcast, Beijing journalist Jennifer Pak delivers a chilling report on China's Internet addiction "rehab" centers, where one youth was recently beaten to death. I also look at last week's 9/11 hoax in Germany and compare it to a media/web hoax I pulled 11 years ago, in which I convinced the local news that I had 6-month old babies around the world surfing the web. The question: is the press actually dumber about the Internet today then than it was back then?

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• [Anonymous]

  Jesse, your talk of hoaxes reminded me of the “Sommy” case from 1997: http://www.cbc.ca/10th/columns/hackers_gorbould.html . I remember blanket coverage at the time, followed by a total blackout. the silence from various media outlets seemed rather, well, embarrassed.

  I’d love to see a “Where are they now?” piece on the Tamai family and their son Billy.

• [Cog]

  Ouch. The ironey.

• [prophet666]

  is new medication for internet addicts comming up.

• [bbonyx]

  Or do bloggers who deem themselves as “the press” of this era lose credibility with their improper use of “then” and “than”.

  :P

• [mdh]

  So that was you. Apparently I’ve been a fan of your work for 11 years, and not three as I supposed.

• [Jesse Brown]

  @Bbonyx, I haz credibility?

• [Roy Trumbull]

  Hoaxes are hard to kill. Writer’s sometimes spend years trying to kill off one of their own creations.
  Reagan had his bag of folklore of the urban legend variety. Stories that were just plain wrong or could never be verified. Mouth jockeys tell the same yarns again and again even when they’ve been proven false.
  I’m just finishing a Sci-Fi story in which the reason health care costs are going up is that the mob has taken over and is skimming the profits. I expect that to be reported as fact any day.
  One of the health care mob’s enforcers was hired away from a Mexican drug gang. One health plan executive gets the wings blown off his jet in a turf war.

• [Anonymous]

  Journalism is broken. (But it’s a systemic problem of the industry; not necessarily the fault of journalists.)