Visitors to Mail Online today were treated to a lengthy in-depth and entirely fictitious report about recent goings-on in Westeros. Thanks to the paper’s crack team of Game of Thrones watchers, readers were alerted to the fact that Tyrion Lannister REDACTED in REDACTED and Yara Greyjoy REDACTED, while across the narrow sea Daenerys Targaryen REDACTED REDACTED some dragons.
The paper admits, once, that it’s talking about a television show featuring actors and everything. And it does, to be fair, have the words “SPOILER ALERT” in the headline in big capital letters. Excise a dozen words, though, and you’re left with remarkably few clues that the paper is talking about a work of fiction, rather than the politics of a little known and bizarrely backward monarchy.
Perhaps the Mail, leading the way as ever, has stumbled on to a whole new source of news content for hardpressed newsdesks. We look forward to more such investigations of entirely fictional news: breathless speculation about the identity of Rosebud, perhaps, or a hard-hitting Jan Moir column explaining why Desdemona was asking for it.
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