NY Times gets punked

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: December 27, 2008

Remember during the campaign when Sarah Palin spent nearly seven minutes on the phone with someone she THOUGHT was French President Nicolas Sarkozy?

(“HELLLOOO!!!“)

“Sarkozy” was really a Canadian radio personality.

DOH!

Palin was rightly and roundly criticized for her ... shall we say, naïveté.

Well, it seems that Palin is in good company—either that, or it’s just really, REALLY easy to fake being an elected Frenchman.

The New York Times —the Old Grey Lady herself—was punked this week when it was duped into publishing a fake letter it believed was from Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

“Delanoe” had some unfriendly things to say about Caroline Kennedy’s interest in succeeding Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate.

The real Delanoe was not amused, either by the letter or the Times’ sloppiness.

Virginie Christnacht, head of Delanoe’s press office in Paris, told the AP the letter was a fake.

“We have asked The New York Times for a denial and an apology,“ she said. “Clearly, this was never sent by Bertrand Delanoe.“

Sacre bleu!

The Times blamed modern technology.

The Times blamed the mistake on a failure to verify the authenticity of a letter that arrived by e-mail.

“In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the e-mail and did not hear back,“ the paper said. “At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoe’s office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us. We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed.“

But here’s the best part: The Times says it’s “reviewing its procedures to avoid such an incident in the future.“

Notice in the Times’ statement where it says, “At that point”? The Times admits that, yes, it should have contacted the mayor’s office to verify authorship—but not until AFTER it didn’t hear back from the mayor’s office about the edited version of the letter!!

Hey, guys! Want to avoid such an incident in the future?

How about actually verifying authorship BEFORE considering a piece for publication?!?!

Admittedly, the Times’ incident doesn’t have the star quality of the Palin incident. It also lacks Palin’s hilarious audio, which will live on forever on YouTube.

But in reality, neither one of these incidents is funny—at all. They’re both just downright sad.

And disturbing.