Last week, two publicly-traded multinational corporations fell victim to fictitious press releases that were distributed by PRNewswire and Business Wire. On June 16th, PRNewswire distributed a fake release with the headline "Obama Orders Full Investigation of General Mills Supply Chain Following Food Recalls." General Mills is an 18 billion dollar food products conglomerate whose portfolio of brands include Häagen-Dazs, Yoplait, Cheerios and Lucky Charms. Just two days after that incident, Business Wire distributed a release purportedly on behalf of Javelin Pharmaceuticals, a 90+ million dollar producer of pain management drugs; the fake headline was "Javelin Pharmaceuticals: US Supreme Court Split - Rules in Favor of Big Pharma."

In a written statement, Tom Forsythe, a General Mills spokesperson, says that "We found the false release and removed it within minutes, but even false information can still spread incredibly quickly on the Internet." Javelin issued a similar statement through a legitimate news release available here. Javelin's release asserts that the General Mills hoax was related, which has been confirmed by virtue of the same New Zealand-based phone number appearing on both releases.

A Dow Jones reporter placed multiple calls to the number and reported the following:
A man answered that phone number last week and Monday but gave different names each time. The person on the phone appeared to be the same both times, but Dow Jones was not able to independently confirm his identity, the veracity of his statements or that he was the originator of the releases.

The person answering the phone said Monday that he had been involved in putting out both releases. He said he had no investments in either stock, wasn't connected to either General Mills or Javelin and wasn't linked in any way to the press release services. Last week, after the General Mills hoax, he said the purpose had been to discredit the U.S. president. On Monday, after the Javelin hoax, he said the purpose was to put pressure on the news release services to " change their systems and practices."
Shortly after the incident, Business Wire announced that, effective immediately, they would no longer be accepting client releases submitted via e-mail. Instead, all releases must go through the company's secure web-based system.

On April 1st, notorious social activist/media tactician Andy Bicklebaum and writer Joseph Huff-Hannon compiled a compendium of 2010's best pranks which was published on HuffPo. The article starts by listing some of 2010's most creative 'traditional' guerrilla activism campaigns and fake press releases. What is more interesting, however, is the short essay's expansion of the concept of hoax to include the launch of "public interest group" The Coalition for Chemical Safety, the Climategate e-mail leaks and the ACORN video recordings.

Fake press releases in-and-of themselves are relatively harmless, as evidenced by the absence of any related-change to the stock price of General Mills or Javelin. The fake releases also did not create bad press for any group other than the mildly-inept press wire companies involved. As a commenter on the MediaBistro article points out, the real problem occurs if and when reporters fail to fact-check stories or adhere to basic journalistic standards. In these situations, minor hoaxes can quickly get out of hand. When the BBC failed to vet Andy Bicklebaum, he was able to impersonate Dow Chemical which caused the stock to drop (albeit temporarily) two billion dollars and created a PR nightmare for Dow. The practice of prudent, methodical journalism should alleviate almost any potential for damage caused by illegitimate stories and media hoaxes.

Sources: Dow Jones Newswire, MediaBistro