way2go! 6. Practice Pack, Arbeitsheft

43 Unit 08 | Read all about it! Unit 08 Read all about it! Read the text about fake news stories of the past. Some words are missing. Complete the text by writing one word for each gap (1–7) in the spaces provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. LANGUAGE IN USE 1 0 written 4 1 5 2 6 3 7 1  penny papers: cheap, mass-produced newspapers in the US in the 19 th century 2  calamity: Katastrophe, Unglück 3  mutilation: Verstümmelung 4  disclaimer: Widerruf, Dementi Famous fake news ‘Fake news’ is a relatively new term, but publishing fake stories is nothing new. They have been (0) by reporters for years. One of the greatest and most absurd cases first ran across the pages of the penny paper 1 The New York Sun in 1885. The newspaper reported that life on the moon had been (1) by an English astronomer through a giant telescope. Moon life reportedly included unicorns and ‘man bats’: furry human-like creatures with big wings. Of course, the newspaper started selling like hot cakes. A few weeks after running the story, it was (2) that it was untrue, but record sales of the newspaper continued. Even earlier, in 1874, a false (3) was printed by the New York Herald that animals had broken free from Central Park Zoo and were rampaging through the city, killing dozens. The headlines read “Awful Calamity 2 ” and “Terrible Scenes of Mutilation 3 ”, but in the last paragraph was a disclaimer 4 which said, “Of course, the entire story given above is a pure fabrication. Not one word of it is true.” However, widespread panic was (4)  , and whilst some people tried to leave the city by ferry, others went to the park with loaded rifles trying to hunt down any dangerous animals. One of the most common sources of fake news is April 1 st , All Fools’ Day, when newspapers and TV stations often run stories as a joke. On April 1 st , 1957, the BBC ran a story about an annual spaghetti harvest in Switzerland. In the broadcast workers were (5) plucking strings of spaghetti off trees and laying them out to dry. After the broadcast the BBC received a deluge of phone calls from people who wanted to know how they could get their own spaghetti tree. The most famous example of fake news, however, is a 1938 radio broadcast of a Martian invasion of earth. When H. G. Wells’ famous sci-fi story ‘The War of the Worlds’ was adapted for radio, it was not meant to be a hoax, but listeners who switched on their radios part-way through the programme had a shock. It was (6) to be a genuine news broadcast and some thought that aliens had landed in various parts of the US. People were (7) that humans were being killed by Martians with heatrays and poisonous gas. Some listeners even tried to flee the areas mentioned in the broadcast. Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv