US Embassy wants Kaieteur News to retract April Fool’s Joke

US Embassy wants Kaieteur News to retract April Fool’s Joke

The United States Embassy in Georgetown on Wednesday took the unusual step in demanding a retraction of an April Fools Joke published by the daily Kaieteur News.

The Kaieteur News April 1, 2015 edition carried a front page fictitious story indicating that “US revokes four Govt. Officials visas”, although the report never named the embassy in Georgetown and never named any government official and carried a February 29 reference date which is non-existent this year, the local embassy issued a press statement hours after the papers made it to news stands, calling for a full retraction of the joke.

The Embassy did not find the April Fools joke amusing although the report stated too that the story continues on a non-existent page 38. The Embassy statement said “Kaieteur News exercised poor judgment in printing this article under the auspices of an April Fools joke” and added that “the US Embassy calls for an immediate retraction of the article by Kaieteur News in both their online and print versions of their newspaper.”

The Embassy in its statement to the All Fools Joke wanted to make it clear also that it “has not cancelled any visas of high-ranking Government officials nor is the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in country questioning individuals as the article states.”

When contacted, the Editor in Chief of Kaieteur News, Adam Harris told News Source that there were several sign posts in the story that it was an April Fools Joke and the US Embassy recognized that in its own press release.

Filed: 1st April, 2015

 

 

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