I thought this story about Japanese pet owners being sold a sheep for $1600 AUD and told they were poodles was a little far fetched. My favourite part of the story is the Japanese movie star that was on a talk show and complained that her new pet wouldn't bark or eat dog food.
"She was crestfallen when told it was a sheep."
The story goes on to tell of another couple who "became suspicious when they took their 'dog' to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves."
A little more investigation shows the original story comes courtesy of "The Sun" newspaper in the UK, notorious for its sensational stories and minimalist approach to fact checking. It seems that the "news" editor at ninemsn takes a similar approach. Sapporo, in Japan, where the scam purportedly took place has a sheep farm and a hill called sheep hill.
ninemsn did print a semi-correction here (dare i say sheepishly), but surely a simple bit of fact checking (remember fact checking? apparently journalists used to do it) instead of regurgitating some tripe found on Google would have saved them the em-baa-rrassment
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