PBS Admits That It Published Fake History Of Betty Boop’s Creation

While PBS did not create the false story about Betty Boop’s creation, they did republish existing online misinformation without any basic fact-checking. Because of their position as a trusted news source, the story spread like wildfire, and soon appeared across social media and hundreds of websites. Today it has even penetrated mainstream culture (Taraji P. Henson referenced it while hosting the BET Awards this year). PBS, for its part, admits that it did not follow established protocol to retract the story in a timely manner since the PBS Digital team that produced the piece believed it to be “promotional copy, not journalism.” It only took down the story recently after the grandson of Fleischer Studios co-founder Max Fleischer wrote a letter to the broadcaster.

PBS’s retraction of the story likely won’t have much of an impact on the Betty Boop creation myth, which has taken on a life of its own. Nowadays, most memes claiming Betty Boop was based on Esther Jones use photographs of people who aren’t even the performer in question. A popular example is the one below, which uses a contemporary photo of a Russian model dressed as a flapper.