TELEVISION - Nov. 8, 1991

Bad News for ABC: ABC’s Peter Jennings has apologized to viewers for airing what turned out to be a hoax--a story about the proposed sale of the preserved corpse of Lenin by a cash-starved Soviet Union. “We were had,” Peter Jennings said. ABC said the source of the story was the current issue of Forbes FYI, a supplement to Forbes magazine distributed to news media. “It was a hoax,” editor Chris Buckley said Thursday. “Things are so confused in the Soviet Union that it’s plausible. We never imagined in our wildest dreams that it would make the evening news.” USA Today, crediting ABC, also ran the story.