Over the years, we've taken a lot of pride in the quality of interviews (or "gets" as they're referred to by us media industry insiders) that we've been able to land on the Northern Alliance Radio Network. Victor Davis Hanson, Michael Barone, Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Burleigh, Vox Day, Sewer Man...the list goes on and on.
But we can't hold candle to Alexis Debat. Over the years the former ABC news consultant has written up interviews with an impressive list of names including Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and Sen. Barack Obama. Those are some tough gets.
In fact, maybe they were a little too tough. Much easier to just make it all up:
Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have added their names to the list of people who say they were the subjects of fake interviews published in a French foreign affairs journal under the name of Alexis Debat, a former ABC News consultant.
"This guy is just sick," said Patrick Wajsman, the editor of the magazine, Politique Internationale, a prestigious publication that has been in business for 29 years. Wajsman said he was removing all articles with Debat's byline from the magazine's Web site.
Yesterday, a spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said a supposed interview with Debat, published in the June 2007 edition of Politique Internationale, never occurred and was a fabrication.
They should have known that the picture of Obama wearing a beret personalized with his name was a Photoshop job.
This incident raises some familiar questions about just what happened to those fact-checkers, gatekeepers, and editors.
In fact, Stephane Dujarric, the deputy communications director for the U.N. secretary-general, 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.
The U.N. official said a second supposed interview of Annan by Debat, posted earlier this year by Politique Internationale, was actually portions of a speech the secretary-general had given at Princeton University.
The magazine editor, Wajsman, told ABCNews.com he thought the problem with the Annan interview, one of the first he submitted, was "maybe a technical one" or a misunderstanding.
Yeah, the technical misunderstanding was the he DIDN'T ACTUALLY INTERVIEW ANNAN! Nice to see the Sergeant Schultz defense ("I know nothing!")--a favorite of US editors--is also popular across the pond. That and pointing the blame elsewhere:
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."
Eetz all zee Americans fault.
I have a hunch that we'll be discussing this story further on tomorrow's NARN First Team broadcast from 11am-1pm. Tune in locally on AM1280 WWTC or listen live on the internet stream from anywhere and everywhere.
Saint Paul is not going to joining the radio festivities as he and his new bride are departing on their honeymoon tomorrow. Not every guy is classy enough to take his true love on a romantic getaway to Tijuana, but our Saint Paul is sparing no expense. Lucky gal.
No comments:
Post a Comment