Am I imagining it, or are we seeing more and more public hoaxes? During last year’s US election campaign, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was fooled by a French-Canadian talk show host into thinking she was having a conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Let’s go hunting some time, she suggested brightly.

During the 2007 French presidential campaign, Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal fell for a similar trick and told an interviewer masquerading as the premier of Quebec that most French people would support independence for Corsica. Royal lost the election. Read more