Joey Skaggs is at it again, only this time, he really is selling a load of bs.

Skaggs, for those of you that don’t know, is a professional media hoaxster. I have written about him from time to time as he invents new exploits that continue to fool professional journalists around the world. He has come up with some zingers, gotten on CNN and other network TV and covered by the wire services and major metro newspapers dozens of times.

Skaggs is a character, no doubt. His hoaxes aren’t hastily constructed – some of them take years of preparation and dozens of volunteers who act out various roles. Laying the trap takes time too as he builds up a phony history that he uses later to confuse his reporters. I’ve known him for about 15 years and some of his media pranks are priceless. He set up a computerized jurisprudence system called the Solomon Project that found OJ guilty, a bordello for dogs, a portable confessional booth that was attached to a bicycle that he rode around one of the Democratic conventions, a miracle drug made from roaches, a company buying unwanted dogs to use them as food, and more. Every one of his setups is seemingly genuine, which is how the media fall for them and report them as real. Only after his clips come in does he reveal the wizard behind the curtain and come clean that it all was phony.

His latest project is a bit more tangible, and luckily for his potential journalist marks, something that they can cover without having to worry about looking too foolish later on. It is an analog watch with a sound chip that moos. As in a cow. Or more appropriately, a bull. He calls it his “Universal bs detector watch.” When you are in the presence of someone who is telling you a tall tale, or some other unlikely truthiness, you press the button and the watch flashes and emits the moo, along with another sound that you might recognize. It is actually a fairly attractive watch, although somewhat bigger than I’d like for my taste. You can order one online here.

Of course, given Skaggs’ nature, one might doubt that placing an order will actually get the goods, but Skaggs assures me that he isn’t a criminal and will gladly ship watches as promised.

He sent me a DVD of two of his legit appearances on ABC’s 20/20 and an A&E special hosted by one of my all time favorite people, James Randi, (who devotes himself to debunking various myths and pseudo-science quacks).

Skaggs has appeared before in his many “disguises” (some are so awful that you wonder what the reporters were thinking when you see them), but these two appearances he was playing himself, and telling the reporter why he does what he does, and how he gets away with his hoaxes so often. Watching these should be part of any j-school curriculum.

What impressed me from watching these old clips was how hard it is to get the media to admit their mistakes and issue a retraction after Skaggs comes clean. Many of you know that I write for the New York Times. And when I have had a minor factual error in my article. I was impressed with how quickly my editor got those posted, and how the Times treats these corrections on their Web pages afterwards – the notation is at the top of the page, and the correction runs at the bottom of the article.

But Skaggs’ events are more than minor factual errors. He is the centerpiece of their reporting, and it is amazing how little reporters investigate, in some cases ignore, the clues that he liberally sprinkles around for anyone to pick up. This is Skaggs’ genius, and why he continually gets his hoaxes on the air and in print.

Most of the news media don’t cover Skaggs when they realize that they have been had – in some cases, they merely remove the piece from their archives, as if they never ran it. This isn’t right.

One of the challenges of the Web is how easy it is to rewrite history, or present something that is factual when it is a bold-faced lie. How many of us believe what we read on Wikipedia, or when we Google something, and take it as the gospel truth? At least on Wikipedia, you can view the prior revisions of a particular article if you are really interested.

Skaggs shows us that we have to be more skeptical and dig deeper to get at the facts. But he also shows us that trusting the Internet for our main source of information comes at a risk that this information isn’t properly vetted. It is something we all need reminding from time to time. And speaking of time, I have this great watch that moos that can remind me that occasionally, things aren’t as they always seem.