DHAKA–Two Bangladeshi newspapers admitted to an embarrassing error this week, after they were duped into publishing a story that reported astronaut Neil Armstrong said his 1969 moon landing was part of an "elaborate hoax."
The story, which first ran on www.theonion.com on Monday, reported Armstrong said he realized he was "living a lie" after watching Youtube videos of the Apollo 11 mission and reading several blog posts by a conspiracy theorist.
Neither the Daily Manab Zamin or the New Nation realized that The Onion is a satirical website.
The Daily Manab Zamin ran the moon story Wednesday, crediting it to the Onion News Network, a web broadcast put out by The Onion.
"The truth is that Neil Armstrong never gave such an interview," the paper told its readers the next day. "It was made up. We are sorry for publishing the report without checking the information."
The New Nation ran the story on Thursday.
"We thought it was true so we printed it without checking. We didn't know The Onion was not a real news site," associate editor Hasanuzzuman Khan told Agence-France Presse.
In the satirical story, Armstrong was supposed to have said that although the journey had felt real, in fact "the entire thing was filmed on a sound stage, most likely in New Mexico."
"I suppose it really was one small step for man, one giant lie for mankind."
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