WHAT A HEEL!: Independent Journalist Fakes Interviews, Quotes
In the ABC News blog, "The Blotter," Brian Ross reports that the list of luminaries who say that they were the subjects of fake interviews written by former ABC News consultant Alexis Debat, 35, and published in Politique Internationale is growing exponentially.
In addition to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) who said an article published in the June issue French foreign affairs journal was a fabrication, the list of faked interviews now includes:
Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan …
Stephane Dujarric, the deputy communications director for [Annan], said he called the fabricated interview to the attention of the editor of the magazine, Patrick Wajsman, in June 2005.
"I told him that if he went ahead with it, we would denounce the interview as a fake," the U.N. official said. "This was not some obscure guy. This was the sitting secretary-general of the U.N., and the magazine was told it was a fake," he said.
Despite that, Debat continued for the next two years to be cited as the author of interviews with a range of prominent U.S. public officials in Politique Internationale. …
Asked why he continued to use Debat after the warning from the U.N., Wajsman said, "Everybody can be trusted once. He seemed to be well-connected in Washington, working for ABC and the Nixon center."
Regular readers of The Stiletto Blog know that Debat is not the only freelance journalist recently caught in fakery. How very timely, then, that Media Bistro is offering a three-hour seminar, "Ethics for Journalists" tomorrow night that promises to prepare journalists to:
† Grasp the basic tools of moral reasoning
† Identify and address conflicts of interest
† Understand a journalist's legal and ethical obligations to sources
† Deal with government and corporate control of news media
† Report on sensitive religious and moral subjects without offending or pandering
† Create ethically sound relationships with editors, colleagues, and competitors
Since James Taranto has habitually been foregoing the necessary disclosures to inform readers of the conflict of interest that occurs every time he publishes or otherwise promotes an article written by his girlfriend, Heather Robinson, in OpionionJournal.com he definitely ought to take this class. Robinson, whose clip book is thinner than an anorexic fashion model - but who has already been accused of fabricating quotes - should join him so she can get a clue on the whole shebang. The seminar costs only $65 and since neither Taranto nor Robinson attended journalism school (Taranto couldn’t quite manage to graduate college, either), it’s a bargain at twice the price for them both.
Editorial Note: The Stiletto’s use of the term "independent journalist" in the headline of this post is meant to be sarcastic. An uncredentialed journalist – that is, a wannabe who is not employed by a print or broadcast media company and scrounges for occasional assignments from editors who work at these companies in the hopes of eventually being hired as a staffer – used to be called a "freelancer." However, we are living in resume inflating times, and Robinson is among the wannabes who have taken to referring to themselves as "independent journalists." Considering that she is neither "independent" – her boyfriend leverages his position and personal contacts to get her choice assignments in high-profile publications, including his own – nor a "journalist" in the commonly understood sense of the term, this is a honking case of chutzpah.
I suppose we have to put up with these fabricators - at least it's not China...
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The best headline The Stiletto saw about this topic is 'Fake it till you make it." It captures the prevailing zeitgeist of amorality, sense of entitlement, and overweening ambition amongst those who do not see journalism as a calling, but as a stepping stone to fame (if not fortune). In some cases, they are unwilling to put in the years of grunt work it takes to become seasoned enough to earn their place on a masthead. In other cases, they lack the talent to become superstars without cheating - writing blockbuster stories by making up quotes that are too good to be true. We have to put up with it only because editors don't always do their jobs - but when the fakery finally comes to light (as it always does), both the cheater and his/her editor lose credibility and one or both end up in more suitable occupations.
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Aren't fakeries libelous?
I find this issue particularly bothersome since the interviews on the part of Debat appear in an international journal. Anything can be written and readers who do not know that the interviews are fake, can keep forming the wrong impressions. In the case of interviews of Americans, negative images plays right into the hands of those who love to hate anything American. This does not fare well!
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When you're a public figure - and the definition is broad enough to include obscure security guard Richard Jewell suddenly becoming a public figure after suspicion briefly fell on him in the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing - the standard for proving libel or slander is rather high, because of the chilling effect it would have on press freedom if, say, government officials could shut you down with a lawsuit. Debat was careful to write about government officials and policy makers, and it appears he crafted the quotes from a pastiche of public speeches, TV interviews and the like, so nothing seemed immediately "off." Even Colin Powell said that he let the matter go because the interview included statements he would have made had he really been interviewed.
Robinson's fakery is different, though. She wrote an article for James Taranto's close friend Ira Stoll, founder and managing editor of the New York Sun, covering a speech by a Harvard professor (not a public figure) at the EastWest Institute (normally not a forum that a neophyte freelancer would be invited to attend). When the article appeared in the Sun, Taranto hyped it in his OpinionJournal column, Best of the Web Today, and amplified Rboinson's reporting with additional "analysis" of his own.
Robinson got a sensational story out of an otherwise pedantic speech to diplomats and government officials, and neither Taranto's friend nor Taranto himself bothered to check whether it was "too good to be true" - which is how all alert editors spot fakery. The professor claims that Robinson attributed remarks to her that she never uttered, and as a result of the erroneous coverage in the Sun and OpinionJournal.com she received death threats. So you see, Robinson's overweening ambition and underwhelming skill as a journalist could have gotten someone killed.
Sadly, to this day neither the Sun nor the Wall Street Journal have publicly acknowledged Robinson's fakery, and issued a correction to set the record straight or an apology to professor Stern to make amends for causing her distress.
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