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NEW YORK Memo to movie studios: Maybe it's not such a good idea to fabricate articles from real publications to promote films.

Universal Pictures ended up paying thousands of dollars in a settlement to seven Alaska media organizations when it made up fake articles to push the movie "The Fourth Kind."

The company agreed to pay $20,000 to the Alaska Press Club and $2,500 to a scholarship fund, reported the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, which was involved in the suit.

"The Fourth Kind" is a film that claims there were alien abductions in Nome, Alaska.

Universal studio marketing executives tapped their inner George Orwell and decided to write several articles to make the claims seem real, including an obit and news story about the death of one of the characters in movie that was "published" in the Daily News-Miner.

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