AP: Sony suspends ad executives over fake movie praise. The Ridgefield Press, a small weekly newspaper in Connecticut, said it was unaware of the fake ads before Newsweek reporter John Horn challenged their authenticity.
The really baffling part of this mini-scandal is that Sony used the name of a real newspaper.
I mean, it’s crazy. How many people outside of a small part of Connecticut have ever heard of the Ridgefield Press? Why didn’t Sony just create a phony town name, give that phony town a phony newspaper and go with that?
The least baffling part of this is that anyone in the movie industry would be slippery with truth. After all, these are the people who routinely torture history when they make movies purporting to be about real people and topics. It must have come as second nature to make up a reviewer and then make up the lines to use in the advertising.