THE beginning of the second quarter of the year is marked by April Fools’ Day. This is the day celebrated by playing practical jokes and spreading hoaxes. In fact, the first recorded association of April Fools’ references were identified as early as 1392 in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
Some newspaper, radio stations and social media report fake stories to gain attention, and hope for lasting impression. In modern times, perhaps the most famous prank performed by a large corporation was the BBC (Yes, even the BBC has a sense of humour) broadcast a film in the flagship current affairs programme, Panorama.