Will the real De Blasio please stand up? A lesson from a UK newspaper’s gaffe | Bill de Blasio
It was great news.
New York’s progressive former mayor Bill de Blasio, an enthusiastic supporter of Zohran Mamdani, has suddenly turned on the man many expect to be named the next mayor next month.
“While the goal is laudable, cost estimates reported to exceed $7 billion annually are based on optimistic assumptions about eliminating waste and increasing revenue through new taxes,” de Blasio said of Mamdani’s plans to the U.K. newspaper Times in an article published Tuesday.
“In my view, the mathematics does not hold up under scrutiny, and political obstacles are also significant.”
It looks like De Blasio may be switching camps, making a nearly unprecedented pivot to support Mamdani’s main rival for mayor, Andrew Cuomo. Just last month, De Blasio praised 34-year-old democratic socialist Mamdani as “particularly insightful, intelligent and open,” and just two weeks ago the 64-year-old was posing awkwardly for photos. With a “Hot girls for Zohran” t-shirt. He spent much of October dissing Cuomo on social media.
So what caused the former mayor to reverse this decision?
It turned out to be nothing.
“I want to be 100% clear: The report in the Times of London is completely false and fabricated. It just came to my attention and I am horrified. I never spoke to that reporter and I never said such things. These quotes are not mine and do not reflect my views.” De Blasio saiddemands that the newspaper retract the story.
“This is an absolute violation of journalistic ethics. The truth is that I fully support Zohran Mamdani and believe his vision is both necessary and achievable.”
Instead, it’s become a lesson for journalists, and probably everyone else, to be aware that they can use ChatGPT to verify and respond to who you’re talking to.
The Times, which has a small presence in the United States, apologized and removed the article, saying it was “misled by a person falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor.”
However Semaphore reported He said that the author of the article sent an e-mail to an address they thought belonged to De Blasio. “It is unclear how he found this email address, but he received a response and included the quotes in his article,” the report said.
So who did the Times contact? So what verification (if any) was used to verify that they spoke to the former mayor? A total of four people with names roughly the same as Bill de Blasio are listed on LinkedIn; None of them are former mayors, and one of them is a former mayor. lists his job As “Duder and Dude”.
Could Duder at Dude be behind the scam? What about Bill DeBlasio, president of Long Island, New York-based La Vendemmia Wine Importers? Second to Semaphore.
“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” the wine importer told Semafor.
“I never said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” he said, revealing the Times’ lack of journalistic rigor. This DeBlasio said he used ChatGPT to craft his response in the former mayor’s style, admitting: “I could have fixed that.”
Messages and a phone call to the alternate DeBlasio went unanswered Thursday morning, leaving the impostor seemingly dead. Duder at Dude could not be reached.
But alternate DeBlasio spoke to The Associated Press later Thursday and doubled down on his comments to Semaphore.
“I in no way called myself mayor,” he said. “The reporter addressed me as Mr. DeBlasio, and I responded as Mr. DeBlasio. They accepted my offer without any review – now they’re blaming me?”
As for how this fiasco came to be, Dude at Dude told the AP: “I did some research on the proposals, wrote down my thoughts, and used ChatGPT to do a little tweaking. Then I forgot about it and went on vacation. I never thought it would make the news.”
And so ends a rather silly twist on a tight New York City mayoral election. But there’s a lesson here, of course, for all journalists, no matter how experienced: Make sure the person you’re talking to is really who they say they are. Be wary that in the age of artificial intelligence, even a wine importer can masquerade as a seasoned politician.
When you contact Bill de Blasio, rest assured that he was the one who dropped the mole from high in 2014. It is reported that it caused his death. He’s not a winemaker from Long Island. And not Duder, but Dude.
