Really? A 16-year-old kid duped a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter at the fabled New York Times?

Say it ain’t so. No kid could fool the venerable paper founded in 1851 that has won more Pulitzers than any other newspaper in history.

Sure, “The Old Gray Lady” has made some monumental flubs (see Jayson Blair, Duke lacrosse, etc.), but once again a media outlet was caught running with a story “too good to verify.”

The Huffington Post outlined what happened:

“The New York Times got duped today, and depending on your disposition, you either think it’s a slightly comical mistake or the end of civilization. Somehow, a 16-year-old kid got the Times to report that suspected Charleston shooter Dylann Roof was a fan of “My Little Pony.” The youngster, Benjamin Wareing, said he gleaned this and other information from Roof’s Tumblr page.But Wareing doesn’t know Roof, and there’s no Tumblr page.

“The Times never checked either of these facts. It’s not clear what led the Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter to deem Wareing credible — Wareing says she first contacted him through Facebook — but the error made it in. Obviously, in the race to be relay the news first, outlets skimp on the fact-checking. It’s just that we usually think of the Times as a place that waits to get it right. But to think that the “Grey (sic) Lady” is above the pressure to compete with online outlets and Twitter is to be blinded by reverence.”