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It was “humiliating” for a Times reporter to have quoted someone the journalist erroneously believed was former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, an editor for the London outlet reportedly said in an email to staff.
“We should have been on our guard. We should have tried much harder to speak to the people concerned,” Ian Brunskill , the Times associate editor, told the company, according to an email obtained by Deadline. He went on to acknowledge the “serious damage” done to the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper.
“We – reporters and editors – should be asking: Who is telling me this and why?” the email said. “How do I know they’re who they say they are? How plausible is what I’m being told? What can I do to check?”
It continued: “Those questions are absolutely basic. Asking them should be second nature to anyone working for a paper with a long history of trusted reporting. There are no excuses.”
Brunskill also mentioned another instance which he said harmed the paper’s reputation in recent weeks, referencing an “AI-generated case study” on a fake royal household employee. He said both episodes were “humiliating” and “did serious damage to our reputation”.
“We can’t afford to be fooled,” the email reportedly said.
Days earlier, the Times apologized and deleted an article after discovering its reporter, Bevan Hurley, mistakenly attributed quotes that were critical of Zohran Mamdani to de Blasio, the Democratic mayor of New York City from 2014 to 2021.
De Blasio has been an enthusiastic supporter of Mamdani, whom many expect to be elected as New York City’s next mayor on 4 November.
The newspaper removed the article from its website after the real de Blasio released a statement calling the quotes attributed to him “entirely false and fabricated” and lambasted the Times for its “absolute violation of journalistic ethics”.
It was later reported by Semafor that the person with whom Hurley corresponded was not an outright imposter, but a different person who happened to share a name with the former New York City mayor.
The person with whom Hurley actually corresponded was Long Island, New York, wine importer Bill DeBlasio, who told Semafor: “I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor. So I just gave him my opinion.”
