Ah, the British media at its best:

It is necessary to pick through the reports carefully to determine what actually happened, as opposed to what was hearsay, speculation or blatant invention to increase circulation. In a further complication, most newspapers … [indulged in] lifting original reports from the previous day’s papers, summarizing them and then republishing them as their own material with a slight time lag. They are not producing new information at all: the stories are often garbled or repeating the same inaccuracies.

Oh, but not the 21st century or the 20th century. This is the 19th century and newspaper coverage of the 1834 fire which destroyed Parliament.

Here’s a fascinating little film on what really happened on the day Parliament was burned down:

(All of which reminds me that phishing isn’t very new either: say hello to Samuel Pepys.)