The case of the planted article

All the furor over the false story in Newsweek over the disposition of religious materials recalls a (fortunately) much less eventful, though not really less egregious, case of press tampering that took place in the fall of 2003 involving REFR and SPD Inc.

According to those who claim to be able to read Korean, the Korean Business Herald published a story stating that BMW had ordered, and been shipped, 1000 square meter pieces of SPD film from SPD Inc. at $1000 each, a tidy million dollar order and a very promising development for the joint venture between REFR and Hankuk.

The problem was, the story was completely phony. There was no order, there was no shipment, and SPD Inc. itself was in fact in the process of going out of business.

But of course, since the publication is way off in Korea, there seems no practical way to figure out who planted the story and how it was that the very much English-speaking promoters on the REFR boards came to find out about it.

But I guess, in light of this week's events, we should just be glad nobody died because of that story.