Regret the Error

The Sun, a British tabloid, and the Newquay Guardian, another UK newspaper, recently published large stories and a frightening photo announcing that a great white shark was swimming of the coast of Britain. The image was jarring: Jaws was on the prowl. Except, no. The Guardian explains:

A photograph appearing to confirm that a great white shark was lurking in waters just off Britain was today exposed as a fake.
The
man who took the picture, which was featured prominently in the Sun,
admitted he had snapped the creature during a fishing trip in South
Africa rather than off Newquay, northern Cornwall.
"I took the
picture while I was on a fishing trip in Cape Town and just sent it in
as a joke," Kevin Keeble told the Newquay Voice newspaper. "I didn’t
expect anyone to take be daft enough to take it seriously.
"I can’t believe the story went so big in the first place. I didn’t
even get any money out of it. If I’d have made a few quid then maybe I
could have gone on another fishing trip to South Africa."
The
picture was carried on the front of the Voice’s rival, the Newquay
Guardian, last Wednesday under the headline "Great White spotted in
resort waters". On the same day, a copy of the Voice’s front page
appeared in the Sun newspaper.
Before then, the Sun had run a
series of stories claiming that a great white – or even two, a male and
female – had been seen close to St Ives…
The marine biologist David Sims,
who leads the only UK scientific study of large sharks in the UK at the
Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, said: "The Sun seems to run
this story every summer. Just because parliament has gone into recess
does not make this a great white shark."
Mr Keeble’s picture
appeared to be of a great white, but experts pointed out that there was
no way of proving it had been taken in British waters.
Some
aspects of the photographer’s story appeared distinctly fishy. For
instance, the water in his picture appears glass-like, unlike the
Atlantic off north Cornwall, which tends to be choppier.
The Sun declined to comment today, but sources told the Guardian the shark editions had sold "like hot cakes".
The
Newquay Guardian also enjoyed a spike in circulation, and Matt Dixon,
the paper’s head of content, said copies had "flown off the shelves".
He
added that, as far as he was concerned, the story had not yet been
proven to be a hoax, and said the paper had so far been unable to get
back in touch with Mr Keeble.

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