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This actually ran in the kids section of today’s Island. That being a major newspaper, also known for it’s ‘Robbers Of Pubic Money‘ headline. This time they have fucked up on a scale I have not seen and hitherto could not imagine. This is not on the front page, but if you have a chance to get a copy off the stands today, I wholeheartedly recommend it. For the kids. This boo boo illustrates the perils of copying content from the Internet when the people doing your layouts don’t speak English. Or the proofers apparently. Or the editors. Oh my god. This is bad. And it’s in the kids section of a major national newspaper.

Someone has copied some old nursery rhymes, from the Internet I’d assumed. These are public domain and whatever. The problem is that they haven’t copied the old rhymes, they copied some new ones, some very very dirty ones. So now you have a kids section with poems about smoking weed, pedophilia, menstrual cunnilingus, etc. Fucking classic.

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25 Comments »

Tanya J
2008-05-15 17:24:32

I saw the paper itself. Shocking is an understatement! Upali Newspapers is apparently currently conducting an investigation into this. Guess sacking even a number of people couldn’t undo the damage it’s done!!!

 
2008-05-15 17:59:13

Fucking hilarious. My entire team’s sitting around pissing themselves.

 
2008-05-15 19:47:32

Oh man.. this is so damn funny.. they censor the stuff in the other sections… but kids’ sections are not censored.. LOL.. sri lankan newspapers for the win ;)

 
2008-05-15 20:12:29

Hehe it *is* funny, I’ve been laughing at this for hours now :D

 
2008-05-15 20:29:47

Guys, here’s what I got from The Island Editor as a reply for my inquiry….
What a BIG LIE he has as a execuse…. ha ha haaa… he want us to be fools!

from Prabath Sahabandu
to Nilaksha Rathnayake
date Thu, May 15, 2008 at 7:43 PM
subject From The Island Editor with thanks
mailed-by unl.upali.lk

hide details 7:43 PM (43 minutes ago)

Reply

Dear Sir,
Here is our explanation of the mishap:

The Island becomes a victim of net terrorism

We wish to bring to the notice of our readers that there has been a sinister attempt by an unknown group to disrupt the operations of this newspaper through electronic means. It all began in 2006, when a London-based correspondent warned us against such a move.

Recently, another newspaper, too, became a victim of hackers who tampered with its website.

The e-mail accounts of The Island Editor and its Features Editor are the targets through which they have sought to disrupt our system with specially designed programmes. We adopted precautions but on Tuesday, when we usually print the children’s section, we got badly beaten. We believe an infected junk document had eaten into an innocent poem that a young contributor had sent in to share with others, after the proof reading stage. Its effects were noticed on Thursday as well in the main section of the paper but we managed to eliminate them in time for printing.

We have initiated a thorough investigation into the incident and apologise to our readers, especially children, for the mishap.

————

Editor — The Island

…………………………………………………………………

2008-05-16 12:02:51

“We believe an infected junk document had eaten into an innocent poem”

Yeah, right. I think the only thing being eaten at the Island are the hash brownies the editors and proof readers have been whacking.

 
2008-05-16 14:56:37

The man’s an idiot and judging by his letter not the most literate of idiots.

No wonder they run front page editorials on a fortnightly basis.

 
 
2008-05-15 20:54:15

Even though there is an element of humour in the whole incident, This is totally unacceptable. Seriously, why the heck do you have editors??… Do give some dumb excuse…come on, don’t they read the paper before they release it for distribution???… And “apologise to our readers, especially children…” I know for a fact that some parents in the rural areas actually buy their children the newspapers so they can learn their English….Is this what the papers got to offer???.. Don’t we seriously have some sort of regulation on what goes in the tabloids of the papers?…I guess we need proper regulation not only on the news but also on the tabloids too.

Only a few months back, we saw this article on a threesome: http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2008/01/20/mag04.asp on the Sunday Observer tabloid….

But I guess this particular article is just way over proverbial line….

2008-05-17 19:48:59

Holy crap. Nilma Dole again! And on a threesome no less.

 
 
chandare
2008-05-16 00:51:00

Holy effing cow!

 
2008-05-16 09:13:04

HA HA HA…….. NOW THEY BLAM HACKERS HE HE HE

 
2008-05-16 09:33:55

he hee.. that Hacker should be a talented poet. otherwise how he could match his filthy lines with the “young contributer’s” rhyme and meaning ? ha ha haa….

 
2008-05-16 11:40:19

LOL. I’m shifting to Island, Daily Mirror can’t be half as creative even if they tried.

 
2008-05-16 11:56:09

Effin Hilarious!
And yeah, Im not surprised by their response to the mishap. LAME-O!
Thank fook I don’t read the Island… Hopefully the Leader or Times will come up with some funny articles such as this one pretty soon!

 
2008-05-17 07:15:44

OMG! Like, they’re supposed to have an editor or someone who knows not to let the amateur mess it up royally right?

 
2008-05-17 15:12:24

The island is tajing sex education to another level me thinks.. wonder if this move is ministry approved.

 
Charlotte
2008-05-19 01:00:45

In the mirror the other day there was a similar thing. Sports section. An article on the Lyceum International School scrabble tournament. Nice little article with a picture of a scrabble board to go with it.

The words on the scrabble board read: shit, fucktard, and a variety of other colourful words along with ‘albatross’. I nearly died laughing. They’d obviously googled for a photo of a scrabble board to put with the article and hadn’t bothered to read the words.

2008-05-21 10:38:35

When was this??!

 
 
2008-05-22 18:47:31

Those newspaper guys are idiots
Once in an IT mag given with island I think had copy pasted bruce scheiners blog & there was no mention of him. F*CK.

 
2008-05-23 00:19:08

The Daily Mirror Scrabble pic hilarity was on 14th May :-D the pic is not linked to the online version though :(

 
2008-05-23 00:23:27

This is the url of the image that was published alongside that article:

http://www.danielbowen.com/images/2004/0528-scrabble.jpg

which shows up if you search google images for “scrabble” :-O

Excuse me now, while I go get myself a life. :(

 
2008-05-23 00:45:10

Dude! its so freaking hilarious! ROFL!!!

 
2009-04-07 07:09:01

[...] too much, you need four stomachs to process the ruffage. But while the Island is its own brand of sloppy bullshit and the Times is warmed over bullshit, and the Daily News is the whole bull, while all [...]

 
2009-08-10 21:50:38

[...] this from the same paper behind the Adult content  in the Kiddies paper? Why am I not [...]

 
2011-09-01 13:47:57

[...] this copy/pasting went terribly awry. In 2008, the Island newspaper copy and pasted stuff for their kids section from the Internet. Which is [...]

 
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