Malcolm Harris says he made up Radiohead's Occupy Wall Street show

The writer Malcolm Harris has owned up to starting September's false report that Radiohead would play Occupy Wall Street, in a Gawker post titled “I'm the Jerk Who Pranked Occupy Wall Street”. Once the story was running, he went down to Zuccotti Park himself to see how many people he had fooled into coming.

As Spin tells his account, he began with a post for Jacobin magazine saying he had heard a rumour that Radiohead would play, and told a Gawker reporter on Twitter that his editor had stopped him running the full scoop. Then he set up a Gmail account in the name of Bryce Edge, one of Radiohead's managers, and wrote to the protest's arts and culture committee, which called a press conference. Gawker and Russell Simmons spread the news on Twitter.

The story was easy to believe. Radiohead were in New York for two nights at the Roseland Ballroom, on 28 and 29 September. At the first, before “Bodysnatchers”, Thom Yorke had talked from the stage about the film Inside Job. Did you see the film Inside Job? They're still here. Still working a few blocks from here,¹ he told the crowd.

Yorke has since DJed for an Occupy protest after all, at Occupy London's party earlier this month.