Baltimore mayor’s attack on Grayling is a hoax

The row over shadow home secretary Chris Grayling's comments about parts of Britain resembling the bleak American cop drama The Wire took a bizarre turn today when newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic were duped by an elaborate hoax.

The Mayor of Baltimore, Sheila Dixon, supposedly went online to announce that The Wire was about as accurate a portrayal of life in her city as the long-running ITV drama Midsomer Murders is of life in the Home Counties.
 
It now turns out that the statement came not from Mayor Dixon at all - but from Labour activist and blogger Alex Hilton, masquerading as the mayor having set up a Twitter account in the name 'Baltimore Mayor' and released a viral advert on YouTube supposedly from Baltimore's tourist board.

The statement fooled not only the Guardian and Independent in Britain, but also the Baltimore Sun and a host of other news sites.
 
In the statement, addressed to her "fellow citizens", Hilton/Dixon picked up on Grayling's controversial comment made earlier this week that "The Wire has become a part of real life in this country too". It was the use of the word "too" that sparked Hilton/Dixon, for it suggested that The Wire depicted real life in Baltimore. "To present a television show as the real Baltimore is to perpetuate a fiction that dishonours our city," the statement read.

The page on which the statement appeared was an exact replica of those on the mayor's official site, although the web address at the top was different and the small print at the bottom attributes the copyright to R Monkee Esq - a reference to Hilton's Recess Monkey blog.
 
Hilton then linked to the page from the newly created Twitter account and at the same time released a video on YouTube featuring clips from Midsomer Murders with The Wire's theme tune playing and a few choice statistics on the screen.

It told viewers that in 64 episodes of The Wire there had been 82 murders while in the same number of episodes of Midsomer Murders there had been 181 murders, nine suicides and 14 accidental deaths. The clip finished with the slogan: "Baltimore - MUCH safer than Midsomer."
 
The hoax was convincing enough to fool the Guardian and Independent, both of which ran articles about Dixon's 'comments' in their print editions and websites on Friday. Scores of other sites also featured the 'story' - among them was Baltimore's famous daily paper, the Sun.
 
However, the truth soon emerged - as did a hidden message from Hilton embedded in the fake mayor's statement. It read: "I'm just having a bit of fun at Chris Grayling's expense... I was fantasising that I was Mayor of Baltimore and how annoyed I would be. I hope you very quickly picked up that this was a spoof."

Hilton, currently holidaying in the States, then added rather nervously: "Didn't mean to break any laws or ethical mores - please don't extradite me if I have unwittingly done so." ·