Years ago, when presented with the notion that social media (like this blog) was going to re-boot how journalism was practiced, Hillary Clinton replied that the big advantage of the dead-tree/protection-racket media was that it had "layers and layers of gatekeepers" - an editorial process that would mitigate against faulty information getting unleashed on the public...
...OK, stop snickering. It was her line, not mine.
And she's certainly doubled down on the notion that Big Media equals big truth:
Hillary Clinton says people spreading misinformation online should be sent to prison.pic.twitter.com/DC7gNaU2eS
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) October 28, 2025
The statement had been a petard on which an increasingly slipshod (not to mention bias-prone) media has been hoisted so many times it's basically kept blogs like this in business ever since.
But I don't recall anything quite like this story.
It all seemed almost too good to be true: the Times of London ran a piece featuring an interview with "former New York Mayor" Bill DeBlasio, expressing doubts about Zohran Mamdani's, er, expansive plans:
“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.
It was indeed. The progressive-to-a-fault DiBlasio would seem to be a natural ally, no?
It almost seemed too good to be true - good enough for the Cuomo campaign to jump on with both feet. And alas, it was - the Times abruptly spiked the piece:
🚨EMBARRASSING🚨 The Times of London published a "fabricated" story about @BilldeBlasio after getting tricked by an impersonator.@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/2DXbBMXeMX
— Nicole Silverio (@NicoleMSilverio) October 29, 2025
Now, some of those hoaxers are pretty ingenious. The media's fallen for them before. It can take an ace reporter to uncover the machinations oa really, really devious miscreant. And the New York Times certainly had those ace reporters, "confirming" the "hoax" angle in due course, claiming it was an impersonator who'd duped the other Times.
But it was simpler, and much more embarassing, than that. Bevan Hurley, the Times' ace DC reporter, did in fact interview BIll DiBlasio.
Just...a different one:
We found Bill DeBlasio.
— Brendan Ruberry (@brendanruberry) October 30, 2025
No, not that one. pic.twitter.com/Fvsx8WQrG8
“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” DeBlasio said in an interview conducted Wednesday evening through his Ring doorbell in Huntington Station, Long Island, from his current location in Florida.
“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.”
The episode began earlier this week when a reporter for the quality British newspaper, Bevan Hurley, sent a polite email to an email address containing the full name belonging both to the wine seller and the two-term New York mayor, who spells “de” with a lowercase “d” and inserts a space between the two parts of his surname. (In DeBlasio’s view, “low-class Italians use a little d.“)
Now, my journalism career was short, undistinguished and not very profitable - but even I knew to confirm names and offices.
So on the one hand the Times of London has egg on its face for its star DC reporter flubbing something you'd get docked a grade for in Journalism 101. And the New York Times would seem to have committed the even graver journalistic sin of jumping to a conclusion that made their industry look a little less incompetent - almost a victim.
The layers and layers of gatekeepers are apparently all busy concocting excuses for journalistic sloth.
