The Oct. 23 New York Times featured a striking story, to say the least. "To the horror and disgust of mainstream infertility groups," Times reporter Carey Goldberg earnestly wrote, "a longtime fashion photographer has begun offering up models as egg donors to the highest bidders, auctioning their ova via the Internet to would-be parents willing to pay up to $ 150,000 in hopes of having a beautiful child." Ron Harris, the photographer in question and proprietor of the site, was described as a mix of "Darwin-based eugenics, Playboy-style sensibilities and eBay-type commerce." Well, sort of. Try adding Barnum-style promoter to the mix.
It turns out the Times fell for an Internet hoax. The Web publication Feed reported two days later that a quick trip to Harris's personal Web page revealed links to his many porn sites. More embarrassing still, one of the models whose offspring were presumably going to fetch a high price was working a day job at such Harris properties as eroticboxoffice.com and sweet18.com. The egg story was just a promotion for his porn business.
Feed's Clay Shirky put it best: "Falling for this kind of PR stunt is bad enough, but this is the same paper that spent much of the Year of Matt Drudge hectoring the rest of us on the superior accuracy of traditional news outlets. A Times editorial during Monica-gate derided net journalism as mere entertainment, contrasting the values of the traditional press thusly: 'Sound judgment pays homage to speed but reveres accuracy. News judgment can abet courage or invoke caution. News judgment is conscious and conscientious.' Oops."