The latest set of animal pictures were delightful. A group of meerkats peering inquisitively into a camera at Longleat safari park. The accompanying story was even better. One of the creatures, called Monty, had even managed to operate the camera and taken pictures of his meerkat mates. Three of "his" photographs were found on the camera's digital memory card.
The story of the "David Bailey meerkat" was duly published yesterday, with pictures of the Monty and his "out of focus" snaps, by The Times, Daily Telegraph, The Sun, and Daily Mail. Lovely, aren't they? Today's Guardian agreed, accepting the story at face value with a follow-up, and large picture, in G2.
But it appears from a report in Amateur Photographer (AP) that picture editors have been duped. The meerkats didn't take any pictures at all. Keith Harris, Longleat's head warden, told the magazine's news editor, Chris Cheesman: "It was a slight hoax." Love that phrase - a "slight" hoax.
The pictures of the meerkats playing with some camera equipment, and the explanatory story of their photographic achievements, were sent to the Bristol-based South West News Service. It then sent them on to the nationals in good faith.
But there was a glaring error in the story that picture editors should surely have spotted. The camera was a 20-year-old Canon EOS 650 film-based SLR and therefore has no digital memory card.
The revelation of the hoax will certainly be a relief to newspaper photographers, who suffer from the indignity of being called "monkeys" by reporters. If this had been a true story it would have confirmed the prejudices of their critics.
