The Associated Press had to retract a story from an India-based stringer that had Paris Hilton reportedly blathering about the need for action on drunken elephants in rural northern India. The chain of sourcing on the quote is something to behold.
For the record, it is apparently true that elephants there get drunk on farmers’ homemade rice beer, then go on rampages. But it is not true that Ms. Hilton, who served jail time this year for violating probation after a drunken driving arrest, told reporters, “The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them.”
The quotation showed up in numerous places after The Associated Press ran an article by a reporter based in India named Wasbir Hussain. An A.P. spokesman described him as a highly regarded and conscientious stringer who had nonetheless inappropriately lifted the quote from the World Entertainment News Network Web site and filed without waiting for verification. The Associated Press hastily withdrew the article shortly after releasing it.
World Entertainment News, in turn, says it got the quotation from Daily Star, a British tabloid.
Ms. Hilton’s publicist, Lori Glass Berk, said in an e-mail message that she could not fathom how the whole episode started. “We have no idea where this absurd rumor came from, but this is just another example of people putting words in Paris’ mouth,” she wrote.