The 9+1 most famous media pranks

BarcelonaIn honor of April Fools' Day, and hoping that the reader isn't wearing a lollipop on their back—but if they are, that it's from the ARA newspaper—we've compiled some of the most surprising or controversial media pranks since the press began using December 28th (or April 1st) for the "friendly deception." In fact, this piece also contains one, hence the title "9+1": of the ten supposed pranks, one is actually the victim. If the reader doesn't spot it, the answer is at the end of the article.

The War of the Worlds (CBS Radio, 1938)

The first great joke of mass society. A very young Orson Welles, only 23 years old, embarked on a radio adaptation of the novel The War of the WorldsH.G. Wells's novel, but narrated—beyond a brief initial warning—not as fiction, but as a simulated news report, supposedly live, detailing how aliens were invading Earth. Legend speaks of scenes of panic and terrified people, although modern historians have tempered this notion of mass hysteria: there were indeed some anxious calls to the police, but not the massive collapse often attributed to the episode. In any case, that broadcast has gone down in history as one of the first times the medium played with its credibility to achieve a specific dramatic effect.

The Spaghetti Tree (BBC, 1957)

In the 1950s, pasta wasn't as common a dish on English tables as it is today, and the BBC took advantage of this fact to slip in a joke in 1957 for April Fools' Day (April 1st, equivalent to our December 28th). In the program Panorama They aired a video showing a family in southern Switzerland delicately harvesting spaghetti from their family's fruit tree. The press at the time reported that the prank, which again capitalized on the British corporation's news authority, was seen by some eight million people and prompted dozens of viewers to call the television station seeking more information on how to plant one of those fabulous trees in their own gardens. Decades later, CNN described the prank as "the biggest blunder ever made by a prestigious news outlet."

'To er mundo e güeno' (Cinema, 1982)

Hidden cameras, a meager budget, zero actors to pay... and selling tickets like hotcakes. Comedian Manuel Summers was coming off a commercial flop when he came up with the idea of filming several pranks without the victims noticing. The result was a box office hit, although critics panned it, considering it pure exploitation of simplistic humor, like having someone chase a banknote tied to an invisible nylon thread. But, with time, this film and its two sequels have become a slice-of-life snapshot of ordinary people in a very specific era, when Spain was trying to embrace modernity with mixed results.

Expansion of the Catalan coast (TV3, 1984)

What if Catalonia expanded by five to ten kilometers by reclaiming land from the sea, like the Netherlands? This extreme premise was the first big April Fool's joke that the NewscastOn December 28th, the first broadcast on the newly launched TV3, Salvador Alsius boasted about how the newsroom had gained access to a confidential report on the colossal project. "This, besides satisfying the legitimate desire for territorial expansion of certain political sectors, could yield incalculable economic benefits," he asserted. However, he also predicted that owners of beachfront properties wouldn't be very happy, as they would be relegated to inland properties. The hilarious video includes statements from Jordi Almogàver, likely the director general of coastal expansion, interviews with those affected, and a statement from a purported high-ranking Dutch official.

Frenchman wins in Switzerland (SF, 1987)

Even the Swiss, proverbially one of the most serious people in Europe, are not immune to pranks. On April Fools' Day, the public television station Schweizer Fernsehen broadcast a fake news story claiming that the station would be introducing French as a primary language, since French had finally been established as the common language of the country's 26 cantons, with German and Italian as co-official languages. The involvement of two regional politicians at the time lent the story enough credibility that the switchboard received dozens of calls, not all of them friendly, due to what they considered an unacceptable resignation. The uproar resulted in the resignation of the head of news.

Chameleon (TVE, 1991)

When fiction is mixed with an informative format, there is a great risk of stepping on a minefield. RTVE's head of programming, Joan Ramon Mainat, learned this firsthand when he dared to schedule a program that played with this ambiguity and was summarily dismissed after just one episode. The program in question was significantly called... The chameleonAnd in its debut, it simulated an attack in Russia that could have cost the country's then-president, Mikhail Gorbachev, his life. Real images, taken out of context, were mixed with the network's news anchor, Pitu Abril, narrating the unfolding events, with live feeds from network journalists who were participating in the hoax. Today, it would be a program that would prompt reflection on the media's power to decontextualize and its ability to artificially create a specific mood, but it was probably too far ahead of its time.

The love story of Maribel Verdú and the Prince of England (TVE, 1993)

One of the most elaborate media pranks was the one perpetrated by the charity program Innocent, innocentIn its 1993 edition, Maribel Verdú landed at Barajas Airport and was met by a mob of (fake) journalists who questioned her about the matter that had just been revealed: her affair with the then Prince Charles of England. They showed her a cover ofThe Country Manipulated, she was assaulted by press professionals she knew, photographers bombarded her with flashes as they pushed her towards the airport press room... Understandably, she didn't know what to do next and her natural and carefree reaction went down in media history.

Left-handed Whopper ('USA Today', 1998)

Left-handed people also have the right to enjoy hamburgers comfortably. This was the argument made by Burger King in a full-page ad in USA Today, where they presented the new Whopper for left-handed people, designed for the 32 million citizens of the country who are left-handed. The invention had the same ingredients, but with all the toppings rotated 180 degrees, "so this redistributes the weight of the sandwich so that the bulk of the toppings are on the left, thus reducing the amount of lettuce and other ingredients." toppings that can spill down the right side of the burger." The next day, the chain claimed in a new ad—revealing the joke—that thousands of customers demanded the left-handed version, while many right-handed customers also demanded the proper version.

Punk'd (MTV, 2003)

No one has yet surpassed, in terms of celebrity pranks, the stunts Ashton Kutcher pulled for MTV's Punk'd. With a huge production budget, they managed to make Justin Timberlake cry by making him believe the police were seizing his house and all his possessions for unpaid taxes, and to send Beyoncé into a frenzy when, in a fake promotional stunt, a giant Christmas tree fell on a group of children. The magazine Time He felt that Timberlake's joke deserved third place in his ranking of the most epic moments in the history of the reality showsThe series languished and closed in 2007, but later other presenters have tried to revive it, with mixed results, but demonstrating that the genre of candid reactions and hidden cameras does not completely go out of fashion.

Volkswagen (2021)

Volkswagen CEO Scott Keogh probably wasn't in the mood for any more jokes after the April Fool's joke about bankruptcy he staged in 2021. The company announced, on the day ofApril FoolsThe executive joked that, given the rise of the electric car market, the brand would be renamed Volkswagen. The problem was that the executive, playing along with the joke, actually confirmed it to a media outlet that checked, just in case he was serious. And, when it was published in several prestigious newspapers, the stock price began to rise, as it was interpreted as a move by the veteran company toward a futures market. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) opened an investigation, and Keogh had to issue a public apology.

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Readers who wish to verify which of these gems is actually the invention of the idle writer need only look at the first letter of each paragraph and combine them to find the solution. Happy April Fools' Day, in a world with so many guilty parties.