TMZ Falls For JFK Nude Women Photo Hoax

TMZ has been on a roll this year, but that doesn’t make the gossip giant immune from falling for a hoax, and today’s effort will be long remembered.

TMZ has an “exclusive” photograph up on site which is claimed to show JFK on a boat in 1956 with nude women. They’ve even rolled out “experts” to verify that the photo shows JFK, and claim that the photo “could have changed history.”

It sounds good in theory, except that the photograph comes from a November 1967 Playboy photo spread titled “Charter Yacht Party: How to Have a Ball on the Briny with an Able-Bodied Complement of Ship’s Belles,” and shows a model on the boat, not JFK.

The Smoking Gun has the details here, along with a side-by-side comparison of the original color photograph from Playboy (above), and the (strangely switched to black and white and now crumpled) photo from TMZ.

At the time of writing, TMZ is sticking by its story, but you’d have to think it’s only a matter of time until they pull it. For prosperity, a shot from TMZ as follows: