Croatia News - CroatiaPress.com

Zagreb, February 10 (CP) – A young man’s prank ended up as a published interview in the Jutarnji List daily on Saturday stirring up the cabinet office and resulting in the paper’s apology to readers and the PM.

The unusual highly embarrassing mishap took place as the Jutarnji List daily editor Davor Butkovic relied on an anonymous e-mail address and some text messages as grounds for a genuine interview.

After the media blunder was discovered, a 23-year-old man reported to the paper saying that he was the one who impersonated Sanader, thinking that someone was playing a joke on him by sending the questions into his mailbox.

He decided to play along with the joke and sent the answers to the e-mail address the questions came from. The man said that as a prank he had obtained the mobile phone number of editor Butkovic and sent him New Year’s greetings and Butkovic for some reason thought this was the PM’s mobile phone number and continued contacts using it and requesting an interview.

The young man said he just could not resist seeing how far this would go, but said he was convinced he had not been taken seriously and was shocked to find the interview making the Saturday edition of Jutarnji List.