The key to making it in the media as a story is to tell them the story they want to hear, whether it is about white gang rapists at UVA or Duke, or a 17 year old named “Mohammed Islam” making $72 million on Wall street.
People named Mohammed Islam typically do not excel in high IQ professions.
Chaim Amalek: “The genius in having a name like “Mohammed Islam” is that if you do something terrible (not this – making an ass out of New York Magazine is a public service) the media will be terrified to call you out by your name.”
It’s been a tough month for fact-checking. After the Rolling Stone campus rape story unraveled, readers of all publications can be forgiven for questioning the process by which Americans get our news. And now it turns out that another blockbuster story is—to quote its subject in an exclusive Observer interview—”not true.”
Monday’s edition of New York magazine includes an irresistible story about a Stuyvesant High senior named Mohammed Islam who had made a fortune investing in the stock market. Reporter Jessica Pressler wrote regarding the precise number, “Though he is shy about the $72 million number, he confirmed his net worth is in the ‘high eight figures.’ ” The New York Post followed up with a story of its own, with the fat figure playing a key role in the headline: “High school student scores $72M playing the stock market.”
And now it turns out, the real number is … zero.
