Last week, the New York Times was promoting an upcoming “documentary” TV series about today’s Ku Klux Klan, without, of course, getting into any of those messy questions about whether today’s KKK really exists or not, except as a popular bogey man and more or less wholly owned subsidiary of the FBI and SPLC staffed by hired infiltrators:

Inside the Ku Klux Klan, With an A&E Documentary Series

By KATHRYN SHATTUCK DEC. 18, 2016

But this week from the New York Times:

A&E Shelves a K.K.K. Documentary Series Over Cash Payments

By ELI ROSENBERG DEC. 24, 2016

A documentary series that was set to take viewers inside the Ku Klux Klan has been canceled by A&E after the network discovered that some of the show’s producers had made cash payments to participants on the show. …

In a statement on Saturday, A&E said the decision not to air the show was based on a revelation that third-party producers had given money to some of the participants in order to facilitate access.

Yet, that seems like it would have been the most authentic imaginable version of today’s KKK: hired performers engaging in Ku Klux Klan Live Action Role Playing: KKKLARPing.