Newspaper duck
Newspaper duck is unverified or deliberately false information published in the media for selfish or other purposes. This is an international expression: in most languages, false information in the media is called a newspaper duck.
Theories about the origin of the term
Article about killer ducks
The origin of the expression is associated with the Belgian Robert Cornelissen, who once decided to test the degree of credulity of the public and published a note in one of the magazines about the voracity of ducks. In it, he described how one duck ate nineteen of his friends, previously chopped into pieces by himself. After the publication of this story, everyone was talking about an incredible phenomenon. However, after a while, the author revealed his prank. Since then, any false information that appeared in print has been called a newspaper duck.
NT
From lat. non testatum or eng. not testified — previously, in some English newspapers, articles without reliable sources were marked with the letters «N.T.», which was read in Germany according to the rules of the German language as «en-te», consonant with it. Ente (translated as «duck»).
Blue Ducks
According to the theory of the brothers Grimm, in one of his speeches Martin Luther used the metaphor of "blue ducks" to describe delusion or loss of faith.
Article about a new way of catching ducks
In 1776, the French "Agricultural Newspaper" published an article in which it offered readers to try out a new, hitherto unknown method of catching ducks. It consisted in the following: before hunting in a special potion (which is a laxative), it was necessary to boil an acorn, tie a rope to it and use it as bait for a duck. The duck that swallowed the acorn began to suffer, and it left her intestines, after which it became the prey of another duck. Thus, according to the authors of the article, a bailiff caught twenty ducks on a rope, which almost took him to the sky. Since then, these ducks have become synonymous with false news. The same method of catching ducks is attributed to Baron Munchausen (the name has become a household name and denotes a lying liar), only instead of an acorn, the baron used a piece of bacon.
Newspaper duck in journalism
- In the novels of Edgar Poe, you see so vividly all the details of the image or event presented to you that, finally, you seem to be convinced of its possibility, reality, whereas this event is either almost completely impossible or has never happened in the world. For example, in one of his stories there is a description of a trip to the moon — a detailed description, traced by him for almost hour after hour and almost convincing you that it could have happened. In the same way, he described in an American newspaper the flight of a balloon that flew from Europe across the ocean to America: This description was made in such detail, so accurately, filled with such unexpected, random facts, had such an appearance of reality that everyone believed this journey, of course, only for a few hours; at the same time, according to the certificates, it turned out that there was no journey and that Edgar Poe's story was a newspaper duck. The same power of imagination, or, more precisely, considerations, is shown in stories about a lost letter, about a murder made in Paris by an orangutan, in a story about a treasure found, and so on.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Three Stories by Edgar Poe", 1861
- In 1902, not quite a duck was diligently flying through the newspapers — <...> as if the French or Americans have received a concession for the construction of the second great route through Siberia, a two-rail, which will pass much to the north of the current one, will cut tundra, mountains, "river floods like seas", taiga and urmans. I don't know how the news was received in Russia. They say there were even newspapers that seriously supported the idea of the French or Americans.
— Alexander Amfiteatrov, "Siberian etude", 1904
- Legitimists (the lovers of royal power) have three idols, like Indian Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva; three philandering kings, to whom legitimists have religious reverence, give them halos of undeserved greatness - Francis I, Henry IV and Louis XIV. Each of three idols has own phrase, if not deathless, then meaningless… Francis I has the famous phrase "Everything is gone except honor". Louis’s XIV phrases are "The government is me" (L'etat, c'est moi) and "There are no more Pyrenees (II n'y a plus de Pyrenees). Henry IV, the most popular of the three: the promise of chicken in soup to the poorest of his slaves. This hen can be compared to a newspaper duck; the poor bachelor, the heraldic French rooster, did not wait for her. The phrase of Henry IV turns even into irony, if you remember that this good king, who besieging Paris, starved him. The bread that he "supposedly" sent to the besieged was returned in the imagination of poets and flattering historians.
There was nothing like this. Parisians during the siege, from May to September 1590, instead of bread ate tortillas from crushed slate with an admixture of flour from the bones of skeletons, which uncovered in city cemeteries (pain de Madame de Montpensier). Carrion considered a treat; up to one hundred thousand people died of hunger and epidemics. The venomous snakes have appeared due to the decay of unburied corpses in Paris. — Kondraty Birkin (Pyotr Karatygin), "Temporary Workers and Favorites of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries", 1870
- In a Riga cafe on Lime Street we had a chance to observe remarkable sights of the most amazing of all duck’s stock markets. The stock market of newspapers ducks. The shoppers are spies, provocateurs, saboteurs from the headquarters and banking robbers' nests of almost all of Europe, and America―sat with cups of coffee, glasses of liqueurs. Sellers are the local newspaper speculators, editorial pimps, editorial bugs. They fussily ran between the chairs and offered their strange goods on greasy sheets. There didn't even speak in whispers. The orchestra still drowned out the duck bargaining. There is no reason to be shy here because everyone know each other. The stock market of newspaper lies has had its good and bad times. At first, Riga ducks kept in price. There was almost the only point where you could buy at least bullshit. There was a shabby little man by the name of Karachevtsev hanging around the cafe. He proudly called himself a special correspondent of the American newspaper "Common Cause". This quick-witted fellow organized right there, in front of the public, no less than five uprisings a day, no less than a thousand shootings of innocent children, and certainly no less than two or three scandals in the People's Commissariat and Politburo. It was funny that not only small tabloid newspapers, but also the venerable «Times» bought his third―rate shit from gentle Karachevtsev day after day to serve this fragrant dish for breakfast to his gentlemen readers. But then things got worse.
— Mikhail Koltsov, "It got bad ― let's go to Riga", 1930
- The word «duck» in the Russian language has not undergone drastic semantic changes. It has not developed figurative meanings in the general literary language either. Only in special languages and dialects, some things (for example, dishes with a long nose for receiving urine from patients who do not get out of bed) or devices (for example, a device on board a ship for temporarily securing the end of a mooring rope) were called ducks by external similarity. The more unmotivated it seems to be the use of the word duck to denote fiction (most often newspaper), false sensational rumor. This is calcified Europeanism in the Russian language. Sensational lies from the French is canard, from the Germans - die Ente. Newspaper duck is a very widespread concept: it has entered both everyday life and the spoken language. But where did this concept come from? At the time of Napoleon in Brussels, one of the then journalists (Robert Cornelissen) published the following sensation: How great is the voracity of ducks? The experience made on them proves. Out of twenty ducks, they took one, cut it into pieces along with feathers and bones, and these pieces were given to the other nineteen to eat. And so they continued to kill one duck after another and fed the dead survivors until there was only one left, which fed on the meat and blood of her friends. This "well-fed" duck that has since become synonymous with improbable newspaper "news". So the Russian word duck in this sense is devoid of an internal form. This translation of the European newspaper slang entered the Russian language no earlier than the 50s of the XIX century with the revival of the newspaper press.
— Viktor Vinogradov, "The History of words" (article "Newspaper duck"), 1932
- Nowadays, a significant part of newspaper material is no longer written in the editorial office. It is bought. There are even agencies that supply newspapers with stories, anecdotes, reports on expeditions to the depths of Africa and newspaper ducks. Sometimes the material is not bought. It takes from other newspapers, and this newspaper poaching goes unpunished.
— Karel Chapek, "How a Newspaper is made", 1936
- And in America, one newspaper reported that some young man in Iowa sent invisible rays to a piece of lead worth 13 cents. Three hours later, a piece of lead turned into a piece of pure gold, worth $153. Another newspaper claimed that in New York, at the medical college, they invented a new way to teach students anatomy: x-rays are reflected from prints in the anatomical atlas, and then fall directly into the student's brain. The newspaper wrote: "It makes a strong impression on students and in many ways it turns out to be more profitable and convenient than the usual methods of teaching that have been practiced so far. The prints are firmly imprinted in the brain!". But newspapers didn't eat «ducks» for long. Readers demanded more detailed and reliable information about the X-rays.
— Matthew Bronstein, "Solar Matter", 1936
- I knew the least about what was being done at home during all the long years I spent in France. For example, to learn in 1913 from the serious French official "Tan" about the formation of three new Russian corps was unpleasant. And after that ask superiors to explain this "newspaper duck", which turned the truth.
— Alexey Ignatiev, "Fifty years in the ranks", 1953
- According to unverified data, an American with an unconsolidated fracture of the leg bones turned to them. The displacement did not go away, but the patient began to walk. Is it true? The marketing? Just a journalistic duck? Before we saw the effects of stimulation, everything was so extremely clear. Lie. Marketing. Duck. Well, what about our Afghan poor guy? After all, here we are already faced with disbelief in miracles. It can never be! What a pity that every "miracle" is so difficult to protect from charlatans.
— Natalia Bekhtereva, "The Magic of the brain and the labyrinths of life", 1994
Newspaper duck in fiction
- Shubersky. He somehow comes to us and tells us: "Your, he says, Andashevsky took three hundred thousand shares from our company."
Wooland (blushing even in the face with pleasure). So it wasn't a newspaper duck? Shubersky. What kind of newspaper duck? My son-in-law and the company manager took these shares to him, and not to the house, but to the apartment of his mistress.
— Alexey Pisemsky, "Predators", 1873
- — This is a despicable lie! I cried. — This is a cheeky newspaper duck of some scribbler because of a penny line fee!… At least, as far as I am concerned, personally, I will never believe anything that comes out of the circle of natural phenomena.
— Edgar Allan Poe, "The Genius of Fantasy", 1878
- March 8, Monday. Lundi. Montag. Lunch:
1) Soup with oranges. 2) Newspaper duck-fries. 3) Porridge with burdock oil. 4) Chestnut jelly.
— Antosha Chekhov, the calendar of the "Alarm Clock" for 1882
- Perhaps there is nothing serious for the credit of the Usatinsky firm, and this nervous intellectual is worried about his personal scrupulousness, resolves the issue of an overly anxious conscience. But... newspapers? A diatribe?.. Let's say that slander and defamation are the best-selling goods in our country, and you can't get well for every sneeze... However, they wouldn't send three dispatches in a row because of newspaper ducks alone.
— Pyotr Boborykin, "Vasily Terkin", 1892
- The next morning he was already in Moscow. Having put his toilet in order at the Slavyansky Bazaar Hotel, Nikolai Leopoldovich sent a short note to Petukhov by messenger, in which he asked him to be with him by five o'clock in the evening on a very important matter, and then with a sinking heart rushed to the Petrovsky Lines to Alexandra Yakovlevna Palm-Swiss. She received him, as usual, in a seductive negligee, but this time it did not make the slightest impression on him.
"I received your note yesterday," he began, seating himself in an armchair at her invitation, "and hastened to come from Petersburg at your invitation, but I don't understand how an empty newspaper duck could have alarmed you so much." He said all this in a deliberately casual tone.
― Don't you understand? Strange! I thought you would understand now what alarmed me," she drawled, gazing at him intently with her laughing eyes. He couldn't stand it, was embarrassed and lowered his head. She smiled a satisfied smile.
"In the first place," she began slowly again, "you are pretending quite unnecessarily. This article has alarmed you more than me, since you and I understand very well that this is far from a newspaper duck. For you and me, not to mention the rest of the reading public, the hint is too clear… I hope you agree?
— Nikolai Heinze, "In the mud of the bar", 1893
- – ...I understand, of course, you can say that we behave audaciously and abominably, that it's bad to lie; but in some cases, lies, this heavenly dove, are much sweeter than the truth, aren't they?
– Oh..., I totally agree with you, and so does Henrik Ibsen... with his Wild duck.
– Sorry, this is the first time I've heard. That must be hot stuff. I'm sorry, but his vaunted duck ..., in the end, does she still quack, I mean, does she pour or directly cut the truth-uterus?
— Alphonse Alley, "Overheard conversation fragment", 1895
- — Yes, of course, for mercy's sake! — the excited prima donna turned to me. — I have to kill a newspaper duck according to the play. I demand a gun. And the prop tells me: "You can't shoot with a gun, you'll scare the whole audience."
— Vlas Doroshevich, "Operetta", 1900
- I remember these name days. The owner of the "Vienna", the unforgettable deceased Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov, did his best: he decorated my place with flowers and, at his own expense, as a gift, printed a humorous menu for twenty-four people.
Here it is. Huge red on January 26, and under it:
"Snacks are spicy, satirical; vodka is bitter; as censorship, borschek advance, sturgeon in Russian, without typos; duck is not newspaper, tubes with cream a la annual subscriber." Poor witty Ivan Sergeyevich! And your bones, probably, have already crumbled ...
— Arkady Averchenko, "My old box" (from the collection "Evil Spirit"), 1920
- And here, science and the personal example of a mocking hare, a skinner and even an official Sapek, thanks to which a nervous, vulnerable tapeworm with a complex of an individual, Alphonse Alley, was able to complete his method of "sarcastic conformism" <...> From now on, everything he said (and did) will be worn in advance the trademark of bluffing, "blowing smoke" in the eyes — or a newspaper duck, and with the triumph achieved in this field, he will surpass not only himself, but also his corpse... And even twenty years after his death, the common phrase "yes, it's all Alley!" still meant: went to poison! nonsense! nothing serious! In a word — sh-sh..., not a duck, not a duck..., but not a goose either.
— Yuri Hanon, "Black Alleys", 2013
Newspaper duck in poetry
Let... give me a place,
Otherwise I won't allow it! —
Maybe I'll overcook the duck,
Maybe I'll comb my balls.
— Mikhail Savoyarov, "Newspaper Couplets"
She carried hard-boiled eggs,
she loved colored cabbage,
and confused everyone
by painting her bangs once.
I wrote an article in
the newspaper and became a newspaper duck.
She kept shoelaces in the cupboard,
saying it was spaghetti.
— Jan Brzehva, "The Balamutka Duck" ("Kaczka-dziwaczka", trans. Igor Belov), 1956
Famous newspaper ducks
- The demolition of the Great Wall of China is a famous newspaper duck, published by agreement by all newspapers in Denver (USA) on June 25, 1899.
In articles with screaming headlines "The Great Wall of China is doomed! Beijing is hungry for world trade!" contained information that the Chinese government, in search of foreign investment, allegedly decided to demolish the Great Wall of China and build a modern highway in its place and that it was accepting applications for these works from American businessmen.
The "Duck" was picked up by European publications and, passing from newspaper to newspaper, acquired new details, including comments by Chinese Mandarins. Almost all publications agreed that the Americans were sending an armed detachment to China to hide a dilapidated monument of antiquity.[1]
- "The Big Moon Swindle" (Eng. The Great Moon Hoax), or the lunar "duck" is a series of six essays published in the New York newspaper "Sun", the first of which was published on August 25, 1835, about the discovery of life and civilization on the moon. This discovery was falsely attributed to John Herschel, perhaps one of the most famous astronomers of his time. The author of the "duck" is usually called the Sun journalist Richard Adams Locke, who, however, has never publicly admitted this. Locke's authorship was insisted on by his close friend and biographer William Griggs, who published in 1852. the biography of the hoaxer, however, the issue has not yet been finally resolved.
- San Serriffe is an island—state created by the journalists of The Guardian newspaper as an April Fool's joke in 1977. It was shown in a seven-page supplement to the hoax, published in the style of modern reviews of foreign countries dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the island's independence, complete with thematic advertisements from large companies. The application contained a detailed description of the country as a tourist destination and a developing economy, but most of its geographical names and symbols were puns and wordplay related to printing (for example, "sans serif" and the names of common fonts). The original idea was to place the island in the Atlantic Ocean near Tenerife, but due to a collision with the ground of two Boeing 747s there, a few days before publication, it was moved to the Indian Ocean, near the Seychelles. Because of this late decision, the authors made San Serriffe a moving island - a combination of coastal erosion on its western side and sediments in the east causes it to move towards Sri Lanka, which it will eventually encounter, at a speed of about 1.4 kilometers per year (0.87 miles per year).
San Serriffe was one of the most famous and successful hoaxes in recent times [when?] decades; it became part of the general cultural heritage of literary humor, and a secondary body of literature was created on its basis. The nation was reused for similar hoaxes in 1978, 1980 and 1999. In April 2009, the geography, history and culture of San Serriffe were widely covered in the newspaper's cryptic crossword puzzle.
[2]
Epic Ducks
There are a lot of examples of lies in the newspapers.
One of the most epic examples of lies in literature is The Journey of Sir John Mandeville, Knight, a book published in the Middle Ages. It is in this book that various creatures are described, supposedly inhabiting distant countries: people with dog heads, one-eyed people, people without a head, with eyes on their shoulders and a mouth on their stomach. There are also described trees on which live sheep grow instead of fruits, and many other wonders. No one was bothered even by the fact that Sir John Mandeville was not listed in the lists of the English nobility, and the book was written in French. The author of the book is known — this is the doctor Jean de Bourgogne, who died in Liege in 1375. Accordingly, it was he who confessed on his deathbed in plain text that he wrote this book himself. He borrowed some of the interesting things from various old books, and he thought of another part himself. This book was illustrated, and the creatures described in it began to appear even on medieval maps.
One of the first newspaper ducks appeared as early as 1698, when an article appeared in the British press saying that on the first day of April in the Tower everyone will be able to see a demonstration washing of white lions. Crowds of curious Londoners rushed to the walls of the famous prison. 200 years later, one of the British newspapers published this comic ad again, and the people of London ran to the Tower again, which seems to hint at their level of mental development…
In the 90s, when newspaper editing became less strict, and the struggle for survival became crueler and viler, an article about strange creatures that allegedly started in the Gulf of Finland appeared in one newspaper. These creatures, serpentine and toothy, are distinguished by their ability to live in dirty water, and warming has made it possible for them to survive in the winter cold. As stated in the note, "In all probability, eggs of the Amazon piranha were delivered to the waters of the Gulf of Finland with some trawler." However, piranhas in our waters began to occur after it became fashionable to keep this cute fish in aquariums, and since it grows quickly and begins to eat a lot, it is often thrown into the nearest river. Such a fish can live in the river until the end of summer, and if it gets, for example, into the cooling pond of the CHP, then it will successfully overwinter. But piranha cannot reproduce in our conditions.
A more recent example — on March 13, 2010, viewers of the Georgian pro-government Imedi TV channel were suddenly shown an emergency news release. It said that the evil Russians treacherously attacked, seized the whole of Georgia, killed Saakashvili, as a result of which chaos and anarchy reigned in the country. The news puzzled viewers, but the fake was quickly revealed.
Interesting facts
In one of the episodes of the program "Good Night, kids!" her character, Karkusha, decided to become a journalist. At first, she took a picture of the presenter in a cap and said that he was wearing a cap because he was hiding that he was bald, and then she began to ask another character, Stepashke, strange questions. For this behavior, she was turned into a newspaper duck. The program was criticized in the media; for example, a columnist for the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper advised the writers of the program to raise other topical issues in this case: "For example, the problem of corruption has not yet been covered in Spokushki. Let them show how Filya became an official and started taking bribes".
Synonyms of the term
Slander
Lies
Provocation
Deception
Fiction
Inaccuracy
Untruth
References
- ↑ Thomas J. Campanella. The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World. Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. ISBN 1568986270. Page 110.
- ↑ Talk:San_Serriffe
- Universal additional practical explanatory dictionary (I. Mostitsky)
http://rus-yaz.niv.ru/doc/dictionary/mostitskiy/index.htm
- Encyclopedic dictionary of winged words and expressions. — M.: "Lockid-Press". Vadim Serov. 2003.
https://rus-wingwords-dict.slovaronline.com/677-Газетная%20утка
- Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ru/
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