Socialite and reality star Kim Kardashian asked her millions of Twitter followers early Friday morning if Cher was dead. Needless to say it was an instant Twitter trend and many Cher fans tweeted in terror. Could this be true??? Nope. Our sister site GossipCop confirmed the pop star was alive and well and the whole [...]

During the last question of the night at the Flordia GOP presidential debate on CNN, moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Rick Santorum why he was the candidate most likely to defeat President Obama. Santorum explained his differences with Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, giving a laundry list of policy contrasts, perhaps most notably on climate change. “Cap and trade!” Santorum exclaimed. “Both of them bought into the global warming hoax!”

Early this morning, we published a report on Alessio Rastani, a man interviewed by the BBC about the current economic state. Introduced as an independent trader, Rastani apparently made “jaws drop” at the station with his confession that he dreams of a recession and his statement that “Goldman Sachs rules the world.”

CBSNews.com axed all ties with Shira Lazar‘s webshow What’s Trending this weekend after last Friday’s hoax tweet which purported the death of Steve Jobs that, in Gawker’s words, “freaked out the internet.”

Who would have thought that so much incorrect information could be shared on the internet? A day after the now-infamous “not guilty” verdict in the Casey Anthony case, Twitter user sexxxykarin (so right away, we know it’s coming from a truly reliable source of information) sent out tweets claiming to know who one of the jurors was. Well, since everyone that day was acting in a calm, reasonable state of mind, the natural reaction was to… go ballistic.

Whoopsie! The Associated Press had to send out a “mandatory kill” on a juicy story that turned out to be nothing more than a hoax: a bogus news release supposedly send out by General Electric headlined “GE Responds to Public Outcry – Will Donate Entire $3.2 Billion Tax Refund to Help Offset Cuts and Save American Jobs.”

The AP ran with the story, and was then forced to retract it about half an hour later. An AP story on its own mistake said “the fake release, which was emailed to the AP, included a GE logo and a link to a website designed to look like GE’s website. The AP published a 90-word story based on the release. Thirty-five minutes later, AP withdrew the story and advised its customers that the story was a hoax.” Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter explained “the AP did not follow its own standards in this case for verifying the authenticity of a news release.”

There’s no shortage of real, wrenching heartbreak in Japan, but that hasn’t stopped hoaxers from adding to the misery. For Ashley Russell, that misery came in the form of a fake story he read online listing his daughter among the dead in Japan. “There are some evil people out there,” said Russell, a 48-year-old publisher. “Her employer told me other people had suffered the same hoax as well.”

Poison frontman and Celebrity Apprentice champion Bret Michaels disobeyed the doctor’s orders last week to put on an energetic performance on American Idol. For the anchors of Fox 5’s Good Day New York, his recovery from a brain hemorrhage and stroke and his not-yet-fixed heart condition was more than miraculous– it was too good to be true.

Empathy, sorrow and compassion are emotions one typically feels after watching a guest tear up on television. But every rule has an exception, and the appearance of Richard Henne (a.k.a. father to Balloon Boy) on Larry King is one such exception. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer aired clips of tonight’s coming interview with Larry King in which Henne gets remarkably emotional telling his side of the story, most notably, that there was no hoax. Video after the jump.

File this under “too good to check.” The “Axe Effect,” a marketing construct that humorously taps into the fervent male fantasy that irresistible sexual magnetism can be purchased in a bottle, faces a court challenge from a luckless, clueless guy who makes us all feel better about ourselves. The story of Vaibhav Bedi’s quixotic crusade against the “Axe Effect” shot all over the internet and up the Digg charts, until it was shot down.

The Drudge Report is currently running a red headline that says “See U.S. Military Snatch Protester…” that links to a YouTube video of what appears to bethe most absurd bit of street theater I’ve seen in awhile. Hot Air has already posted some extensive debunkage, but just watch the video, particularly the driver, who appears to be wearing Skechers:

Apparently shifting the media landscape in record time isn’t enough to keep you busy — there’s free time to plan somewhat elaborate pranks on one another! Yesterday TechCrunch‘s Jason Kincaid noticed a “fax” icon on the photos on his Facebook account and, after confirming with this new feature with his cohorts, he promptly filed a post titled Facebook Now Lets You Fax Your Photos. I Have No Idea Why Anyone Would Want To Do This. Turns out that it was a joke!

This week reports surfaced that Bob Dylan was considering lending his voice to a GPS navigation system. Numerous mainstream media sources picked up the story and ran it as hard news — BBC, NY Times, and the Washington Post all published stories about the convergence of 60′s folk rock and the latest in automotive technology. But as Gossip Cop reported today, this story doesn’t exactly check out.