The gossip website TMZ.com was today touting the scoop of the year, any year: A photo of John F. Kennedy cavorting on a yacht with naked women. Naturally, I had to go take a peek…and I saw this article which explained how thoroughly they had verified the photo's authenticity. I also saw the photo and instantly thought, "Hmm…I think I remember that picture from an issue of Playboy in the sixties."
Sure enough, a couple hours later, TMZ is admitting that the photo ran in a 1967 issue of Playboy. That either means it's a hoax or an even bigger scoop than they thought. The Smoking Gun has a good summary of the story…or rather, the non-story. If you prowl through the comments at the TMZ website, you'll see an awful lot of people saying, before the fraud was exposed, "I'm an expert and I can tell you it's authentic." Yeah, right.