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How to Track and Report a Bogus Twilight, New Moon Hoax
by Reg Seeton
 Late Sunday night on April 19, and into the early morning of April 20, a Twilight story broke around the web that indicated the New Moon production in Vancouver was halted due to a plagiarism lawsuit brought on by a woman named Heidi Stanton, a former roommate, as the reported stated, of Stephenie Meyer at Brigham Young University years ago. The New Moon story claimed that Meyer got the idea for Twilight from her former roommate who handed in a vampire story to her professor, a Dr. Peter Benton, who coincidentally just happened to have the same name of Dr. Peter Benton from the long-running hospital drama, ER. Alarm bell #1.
The New Moon story also claimed, with a quote, that Dr. Benton remembered the vampire story in question and backed up the plagiarism claim. That's right, from memory. Alarm bell #2. As the Twilight related story unfolded, it went on to state that filming on New Moon in Vancouver had been halted due to the recently filed lawsuit. Yet when searching for the "major" breaking Twilight news on New Moon, no major outlet or publication had picked up the story. None! For those who don't know, that's alarm bell #3.
On Sunday night, the only truly credible reports that I found, however, came from the dogged and determined gang at Twilight Lexicon who were all over the story like - for lack of a better analogy - rabid vampires on blood. The Lexicon gang gave a blow-by-blow breakdown, with updates, of the events as they happened until they were able to report an official word from reps at Summit Entertainment who confirmed the New Moon story was fake and completely false. On a Sunday, non-business night, too.
Sensing a tidal wave of stories to hit the web, I shot an e-mail off to Twilight Lexicon to get the scoop on the validity of the Summit denial before even remotely thinking of putting one word of text to white background on a story like this. Soon enough the Lexicon gang got back to me when I inquired if they were sure Summit denied the story, "They did," the response began. "Filming has not stopped on the picture. The release date has not been changed."
 A second follow up e-mail from Twilight Lexicon hit my inbox a few minutes later with another update that added even more clarity to the bogus New Moon story in that Stephenie Meyer's publicist confirmed to Lexicon that the story was nonsense. That's right, Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, and Nikki Reed were still on the job, and were from the beginning of the New Moon shoot.
So all in the span of a few hours, the story broke, traveled the web, and was shot down by Lexicon all before Monday morning business hours. Impressive work! Of course when the day got going, there was word from Stephenie Meyer's camp that "... after consulting with Stephenie Meyer and her publishers, speculation about any claims of plagiarism are also completely not true. This is a hoax, pure and simple."
Not only was there no trace of a Dr. Benton at BYU, less than 24 hours later there was no trace of the original story at the source.
That's how it's done, people. That's how to track and report a bogus New Moon hoax of a story, follow up, confirm and close out the fake Twilight show. No tabloid garbage or jumping the gun, just staying with the real story until it’s resolved. It takes work. Twilight fans should be proud that they actually have a site where the staff actually knows what they're doing, has integrity in getting to the truth, and are devoted to their Twilight and New Moon fan base. I started my online entertainment career in 1999 on one of the most popular "then underground" sites at the time and we had to confirm our fair share of inaccurate and completely bogus stories in the same manner, a lot. You don't see it that much anymore and there are specific reasons for it, which are too long to get into now.
 In an age where the internet has become nothing more than an unmoderated worldwide message board, it's nice to see someone taking care of business the right way. And it's funny how it took a Twilight fan related website to lead the way two days before everyone else jumped on the Twilight bandwagon to report the story, including the mainstream, elite media.
A worldwide standing ovation should go out to the gang at Twilight Lexicon for doing the hard work, keeping things real, and taking things slow and steady on Sunday night to win the bogus New Moon race.
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