Ekstra Bladet reported Thursday in their nation wide newspaper that the Danish band The Chop Chop Family just had won the French national final and would represent that country in the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest. The band says afterwards that they were susprised the newspaper fell for the joke.
The story begins with the Danish band The Chop Chop Family sending a video to Extra Bladet reporting that this is the song that they won the French national final with. They add that the band got so many points that they basically smashed all of their opponents. The song is called Les Pommes Fausaint Roulie Roula and the band hopes that Denmark will give 12 points to them at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Düsseldorf in May.
Ekstra Bladet publish the article in their newspaper Thursday under the title: "Dansk Band vinder Fransk Melodi Grand Prix" (Danish band wins French Melodi Grand prix). Aparantly no research was done and none at the newspaper were aware of that France internally had selected Amaury Vassili to represent them this year or that all songs had already been handed in to the EBU.
Danish broadcaster DR and Danish newspaper Politiken both report about Ekstra Bladet’s scandal, but both mention that the real winner of the French national final was Amaury Vassili. None of them do much checking either as then they would have realised that France didn’t have a national final!
The band afterwards said: We thought that people could put two and two together and that journalists would do a bit of research before they printed a half page article in a nation wide newspaper.
A couple of days ago several large medias in the Netherlands also proved themselves unable to check sources as they reported that 38 countries will take part in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, totally leaving out the big5 countries. This happend as the largest Dutch news agency ANP had written that in a release from the running order draw.
Below you can see the video sent to the Danish newspaper and judge for yourself if you would have fallen for this joke.
