“Michael Jackson Lives” Video Was an Experiment in Proving the Obvious

Last week, when a video purporting to show Michael Jackson alive and exiting the back of a coroner’s van started picking up viral steam, we were skeptical — not of the video, which was definitely a hoax — but of the mainstream media outlets shamelessly running the clip. Now, CNN is reporting that the hoax was an “experiment” designed by a German television station to “show how easy it is to spread rumors online.” Novel!

A rudimentary lesson, to be sure, but RTL, the German broadcasting company claiming responsibility, produced the video to teach people “not to take information at face value.” Little did they know that respectable media outlets would aid in the video’s spread, especially because the “footage” was disseminated with a press release alerting everyone it was a hoax.

Not only did the laughable clip rack up over one million collective views on YouTube, but it was also picked up by Los Angeles network KTLA and the Chicago Tribune, who Gossip Cop quoted defending the video as a “conversation starter.” With that, you could call the experiment an expected success, but for RTL, it was like shooting fish in a barrel despite the implausibility of their hoax: “This was so obviously fake, in the case of Michael Jackson, it just was not possible.”

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