A regional daily’s sports desk scored a victory for being cautious over cavalier when it smelled a rat over an exciting press release.

On Thursday afternoon The Northern Echo, along with many other newspapers and media outlets across the UK, received the release claiming a consortium was planning a £150m bid to purchase Newcastle United FC.

At the head of this consortium was one Rick Parkinson, a “millionaire textile magnate” said to be worth £250m.

The release even came with gushing photos of Mr Parkinson in Newcastle’s famous black and white colours in front of the Tyne Bridge.

Rick Parkinson was in fact 38-year-old Richard Parker, a lifelong fan of bitter rivals Sunderland, who used to be a pub landlord near Darlington.

Northern Echo editor Peter Barron teased the full story in Saturday’s print edition with a blog post on Friday afternoon.

He wrote: “The sports desk received an enticing and very professional-looking press release.

“It was accompanied by an email from Katie Woodward, of the North-East PR Group…..(it) stated that the press statement would be released officially at precisely 8am the following morning. This was our chance to get the story ahead of the rest.

“But we smelled a rat. We could find no reference online to Mr Parkinson and we’d never come across Katie Woodward.

“We took the decision not to publish the story. It would have been reckless to have gone ahead without having some verification.

“I’m so glad that we took that decision – unlike Sky TV, the Press Association and other newspapers – because it turned out to be a hoax.”

A quick Google search showed that several local and national newspapers carried the story at face value.

The Echo had received an anonymous tip off as to Mr Parkinson’s real identity and tracked down a photo of him in their archives dating back to a 2006 story.

He told the Newsquest daily he was getting his own back for years of torment from Geordies.

“Let’s face it, we haven’t had a great deal to shout about in the last 16 years or so,” he said.

“But this summer has, without doubt, made up for all those years of hurt. Newcastle’s plight, as difficult as it is for their fans, is music to our ears.”

Comments

Keith Taylor (16/06/2009 09:54:08)
Well done Pete! can’t pull the wool over your eyes..

sceptic (16/06/2009 14:12:33)
It says a lot for the industry that a newspaper editor checking the facts before publishing a story is deemed to be somehow noteworthy.

Red Barron (16/06/2009 15:44:13)
Yes, we try to check our stories as often as possible. Because of cuts, we can’t do this as often as we like, but in this case we had someone spare to look on the internet. Phew.