Fake NY Post Tells Real Story on Climate Change

Posted by Isabel Macdonald, AlterNet at 3:00 PM on September 21, 2009.

"Free New York Post! Special Edition!"

Amidst the usual daily bustle of hurried pedestrians and newspaper vendors at Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue subway station this morning, it was easy to spot the Yes Men's latest prank.

At first blush, the newspaper, which was distributed by volunteers across NYC today, did look a lot like the New York Post. Yet any closer examination revealed that it was clearly not your run-of-the-mill Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid.

With a giant headline proclaiming "We're Screwed" alongside an image of lighting striking Manhattan's skyscrapers featured on the cover, the 32-page tabloid was devoted entirely to environmental issues. Check it out online here.

Even the sports section had an environmental bent, with an entire story devoted to enumerating carbon emission cutting opportunities in pro sports (such as NOGASCAR -- a hybrid car version of NASCAR).

While a full-page color ad featuring a couple making out on a beach (the kind of image one frequently sees in ads for vacation packages) advertising "sex" reminded readers that that this activity has "no emissions (of the carbon variety)" (The faux travel ad's slogan: "Why Travel? -- You Just Wanted to Get Laid, Right?")

Outside the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway stop in downtown Brooklyn, Erica (she declined to give her last name), a young woman who'd picked up a copy of the paper with a friend earlier that morning at Union Square, stopped to talk to my friend and I about her response.

"First of all we were really scared," she told us. She had been particularly struck by an image of a large tornado featured in the paper.

She said she soon realized "it was fake." But she added, "It's very possible ... We need to be more environmentally conscious."

Indeed, as Rory O'Connor points out, the fake paper's coverage of a city report predicting "massive climate catastrophes" will hit New York City as a result of global warming is all true.

It just takes a fake NY Post to get the real story about climate change out to the city's tabloid readers.

Tagged as: global warming, new york, new york post, yes men, new york subway

Isabel Macdonald is AlterNet's NYC-based publicist. Before joining AlterNet, she was the communications director at the media watch-dog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, and her writing has appeared in Extra Magazine, Huffington Post, the Indypendent and Z Magazine.