>>Apparently the national news for the television big 3 does too:
>>http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/22/cbs-airs-hoax-cover-bush-memoir/?test=latestnews
>
>How did he do it? By making no decisions at all. He was just reading the script...

Now that reminds me of something that happened when I was in college that makes me smile every time I remember it. I worked at the campus radio station, WNUR, doing general news, sports news, a sports talk show once a week (met Harry Caray and Bob Knight that way), and an afternoon rock show. So this one night I was there, having just done my 3 minutes of sports news, when all hell broke loose. One of the news stories that day was that former President Richard Nixon had been afflicted by phlebitis. We did some real reporting but a lot of it was ripped off the AP or UPI wires and lightly rewritten so we could feel like real reporters. The undergrad wiseacre who reconstituted this story (NOT ME) changed one key detail. Unfortunately the news lead that night did not preview the stories and did not realize what she had just announced to local listeners until the words had already gone out over the air. "According to former White House spokesman Ron Nessen, the President's penis turned black and fell off."

She burst into hysterical laughter and could not collect herself. (Fortunately this was not a career ending moment. I have seen her name in the alumni magazine a few times and she is now a muck a muck at a TV station in Iowa). She kept trying to go on to the next story and couldn't do it. The news director who was overseeing the broadcast saw no choice but to play the sounder (prerecorded end of show stuff) and end the show early. I sprinted upstairs and outside to find the jazz guy who was waiting to go on at 10:30. "Dude, you're on the air," I said. He calmly looked at his watch, took another toke of his doobie, and said "Still five minutes at least." I said I'll explain later, come on, you really are on the air. Pleasant memories of academia ;-)