... they hadn't even launched yet.

 

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/151564/xinhua_runs_spacewalk_story_before_astronauts_leave_earth.html

 

China's official Xinhua News Agency ran a story on Thursday announcing ground controllers were tracking Chinese astronauts sent aloft for the country's first spacewalk, complete with details and quotes from the astronauts.

 

Carrying a Sept. 27 dateline that declared Xinhua reporters were "sleepless in the middle of the Pacific Ocean" aboard a Chinese tracking ship, the story -- published on Xinhua's Web site on Sep. 25 at 9:04 a.m. -- offers a gripping account of conversation between ground controllers and astronauts aboard the Shenzhou VII spacecraft, citing the breathless silence aboard the Yuan Wang No. 1 tracking ship as observers waited for the craft to appear on its instruments.

 

No matter how things change, they always stay the same!

 

Here's a similar story from the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/3082804/China-fakes-reports-from-space.html

 

The Xinhua agency, which has sometimes been accused of carrying state propaganda, took down the story and blamed it on a "technical error".

 

Cute how a "technical error" can produce actual quotes from the future. To heck with space walks, these guys are time travelers!

PRAVDA, it means "truth"

Oh well... I guess Fox News always tells the truth. Right?

 

But I agree that the Xinhua story is pretty sad

 

(It's easy pointing for me, not many people even know the names of our crappy news agencies).

So they got confused between a.m. and p.m. No biggie, I do that all the time

They're just trying to pull off their own version of our Moon Landing hoax.

Haha. Maybe they're taking their jealousy for the American way just a weeeee bit too far!

Hey, check this out:

 

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/09/mccain_wins_debate.html

 

Apparently the McCain campaign had ads on the Wall Street Journal website that said "McCain wins debate!" and a quote from campaign manager Rick Davis saying, "McCain won the debate, hands down."

 

Eerily similar, no? Maybe John McCain and the Chinese space program have the same publicist.

Rofl. Well, it's an ad, not a news story, but in the same spirit, perhaps.

It is strange. We're so full of malarky these days that we're pre-emptively re-writing history.

It is strange. We're so full of malarky these days that we're pre-emptively re-writing history.

 

Well, I'm sure it is easier to pre-emptively rewrite history, than to try to rewrite it after the fact. Ideally, though, you'd want to do your rewriting in realtime.