Spoof interview confuses fans

The fake news item

The World News Daily Report used George Harrison's birthday, 25 February this year to publish an "interview" with Ringo Starr, where Starr was to have claimed that the real Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike. Of course, long time Beatles fans realised that this was just a retelling of the 1969 "Paul is dead" rumour. By putting the myth into the mouth of Ringo Starr, the spoof news page was taken seriously by some, and fuelled the "Paul is dead" cult, which still blossoms on the internet, courtesy of people who are prone to conspiracy theories. In the article, writer Barbara Johnson claimed that Ringo came up with the story in an interview with the Hollywood Inquirer in his LA home "this morning".
In reality, Ringo is currently touring, and on 24. February he was giving a concert in Sarasota, Florida, and while "the interview" was supposedly done in his home in LA the next morning, Ringo was really en route to Brazil, where he played in Sao Paolo on the night of the 26. February.

While not ‘satire,’ per se, World News Daily Report follows the old-school Tabloid-styled faux-journalism of its predecessors, such as the Weekly World News. As such, you will find disclaimers neither revealing its satirical nature nor reveling in its journalistic integrity. It’s just for entertainment purposes, so they rely on the sheer audacity of the topics covered to be its built-in disclaimer.

To be blunt, World News Daily Report is one of the sites on the internet who just publishes fake sensational stories in order to earn money from people clicking on their advertisements.

This is the second time in a short while that a fake news story has been confusing Beatles fans, last week a story of a 2015 remake of Abbey Road, featuring Kanye West as John Lennon caused similar controversy.

Source: World News Daily Report
The "Paul is dead" rumour on Wikipedia