DOUBLE DE BLASIO: The Most Wonderful Journalistic Disaster of the Year:
“In my view, the math doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, and the political hurdles are substantial,” de Blasio wrote when reached via email by the Times. It was a surprisingly hard-headed analysis. Many on the right have, of course, long emphasized that Mamdani’s pie-in-the-sky campaign promises are either unfulfillable or prescriptions for civic collapse. But it was a shocker to see de Blasio knifing the man who is the closest he will ever get to an ideological successor a week before the election.
I would love to give you a link to this story, but alas I cannot. You see, the Times has removed it from its website, because as it turns out the paper never actually spoke to Bill de Blasio. The real Bill de Blasio took to Twitter almost immediately after the article was published to state that he had no idea what the heck was going on and that he’d never spoken to anyone with the Times of London. And he hadn’t!
Read the whole thing, which is a hoot.
UPDATE: That Times of London-Bill deBlasio Controversy Keeps Evolving — and Keeps Getting Funnier.
Semafor sent a reporter to the home of Bill DeBlasio – a wine importer, who lives on Long Island. Yes, there are, in fact, two such named individuals in the metroplex. While speaking from his location in Florida, the non-former-mayor conducted an interview with Semafor reporter Brendan Ruberry through his Ring doorbell camera. He explained that he did not deceive Bevan Hurley [the hapless reporter from the London Times]; he simply did not take the effort to clarify things.
Hurley, it is now being reported, sent an email to Bill DeBlasio (not, Bill de Blasio, as the former politician prefers), asking for commentary on the election, and the vino dealer complied with said request. He simply did not elaborate that maybe he was not the intended source for comment.
“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio. I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” DeBlasio told Semafor. “So I just gave him my opinion. I could have corrected him. It was all in good fun. I never thought it would make it to print,” DeBlasio said. He assumed the reporter would “have all his people check it out.”
So what we are left with is not a news outlet falling victim to an aggressive trolling effort, but a case of either mistaken identity or journalism sloth, leading to a man having some mirthful fun at the expense of the paper.
Layers and layers of fact checkers and editors, old chap!