There’s a popular story on Digg right now about a 104-year-old British woman who uses Twitter. It’s an obvious headline: “World’s oldest Tweeter talks cuppas and casserole.” It’s Digg bait. But what’s worse is that if you examine the story closely, it looks like the UK press may have gotten the poor old lady to sign up for Twitter just for their story!

The story is about how Ivy Bean uses the hot social network to post mundane updates about her 104-year-old life. But take a look at the picture in the story. On the screen next to Bean, you’ll see her Twitter page with a whopping two updates. These two tweets were sent out at the same time, the day before the story ran in a number of UK publications. In other words, Bean signed up and sent her first two tweets at the time all these guys were writing their stories. Or, to put it more clearly, this whole story was staged.

I’m sure the Telegraph are using the MP’s expenses story to point out how crucial it is to have print journalists around to do investigative pieces. Rightly so, I’m having trouble imagining a citizen journalist putting in the hours of research required to break a story like that.

It’s important to remember however that UK newspapers are still rubbish. Look at this, the picture is so obvious and a follow up check of Twitter so easy to do. They really must think their readers are stupid.