Calls have been made for the press regulator to investigate “systematic failings which lead publishers to keep running fake, likely AI-generated, PR content.”
Rupert Murdoch’s the Times hasn’t had the best of times of late. Two fake interviews published by the paper in recent weeks have been described as “humiliating” by one of its senior editors.
In a memo to staff, long-standing associate editor Ian Brunskill admitted: “Twice in the past few weeks we’ve been caught out by fake interviews.”
He explained how one incident involved a “bogus AI-generated case study” supplied by a “dubious PR outfit,” and the other a “fake email purporting to come from a high-profile figure in US politics…”
Brunskill added: “We should have been on our guard. We should have tried much harder to speak to the people concerned. If that’s not possible, why not?”
One of the incidents involved an apparent interview with a ‘royal cleaner’ called Anne Simmons, who claimed to have worked for the Royal Family for over a decade.
But, as the Press Gazette reported, there is no record of anyone called Anne Simmons having worked for Buckingham Palace.
Despite this, Simmons’ supposed revelations appeared not only in the Times but were picked up by the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sun, and the New York Post.
But it was the Times which appeared to be the first to run the ‘cleaner spills’ story.
“How do you spruce up Buckingham Palace? A royal cleaner spills,” was the headline of an article published on March 5, 2025. The article has since been removed but is still viewable on Archive.
The second blunder involved a Times’ reporter believing they were interviewing former New York mayor Bill de Blasio for comment on the city’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani. The quotes published by the Times showed ‘de Blasio’ criticising Mamdani’s policies, but the real Bill de Blasio quickly denied ever giving such an interview.
A Times spokesperson later admitted that the reporter “had been misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor.”
The article was hastily removed.
However, Semafor revealed that the journalist had in fact emailed the wrong person, a Long Island wine importer named DeBlasio, spelled without a space. The mistaken interviewee told Semafor:
“I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor. So I just gave him my opinion.”
Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford has urged the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) to investigate “systematic failings which lead publishers to keep running fake, likely AI-generated, PR content.”
In his memo, Brunskill conceded that both incidents had caused serious reputational harm:
“The first hoax (which others fell for too) prompted not just ridicule but calls for the press regulator to launch a full investigation into standards. The second (our own “exclusive”, alas) led to a widely reported retraction and apology.
“Both humiliating episodes did serious damage to our reputation. Both could have been avoided by good practice and due diligence.”
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