A Twitter user responsible for a series of online death hoaxes was behind an erroneous report that author Alice Munro had died.
The Nobel Prize winner, who opened Victoria bookstore Munro’s Books in 1963 with her then husband, Jim Munro, was said to have died Monday at 88.
A Twitter account claiming to be her publisher, McLelland & Stewart, was outed as fake after a subsequent tweet from the same account — reporting that Munro’s death had been confirmed by her daughter, Sheila Munro — was picked up by several prominent news outlets.
Italian journalist Tommaso Debenedetti claimed responsibility for the hoax after representatives from McLelland & Stewart confirmed the author was alive.
Munro is the latest public figure to be targeted by Debenedetti, who has made a career out of writing fake news. He told The Guardian newspaper he has falsely reported on the deaths of notable figures, including Fidel Castro and Pope Benedict XVI, in order to prove “how unreliable social media can be as a news source.”
