These days we tend to associate the name Blair with perpetrating journalistic fraud rather than uncovering it. But it was an email from Australian blogger Tim Blair that tipped off the Chicago Tribune this week that longtime correspondent Uli Schmetzer had used a falsely attributed quote in a story about an Aussie riot. Blair had logged onto Google News to search for coverage of the riot. There he found Schmetzer’s Feb. 25 article, which included this quote about Aborigines: "These people always complain," said Graham Thorn, a psychiatrist. "They want it both ways: their way and our way. They want to live in our society and be respected, yet they won't work. They steal, they rob and they get drunk. And they don't respect the laws." Blair blogged that he doubted the too-perfect quote was true, and he emailed his thoughts to Tribune public editor Don Wycliff. Yesterday Wycliff wrote him back: “It grieves me to have to say that your suspicion was justified. It turns out that, while there really is a psychiatrist and he did make that remark (representing his own views and, Uli Schmetzer says, those of most white Australians), his name was made up to protect his identity and spare him the anger of his fellow countrymen. Schmetzer says the man, a personal acquaintance of his who lives in a place called Geelong, Victoria, asked him to use his mother's maiden name as his last name if Schmetzer used his quote. Of course, that is strictly forbidden -- a violation of the most fundamental rule of journalism.” Schmetzer is no longer writing for the Tribune. Blair spoke to Media Life about how to sniff out a false quote, his reaction to Wycliff’s note and that certain other Mr. Blair.

1. What was your first reaction when you read the alleged quote?

   Absolute amazement. 
   It was a dream quote for anyone seeking to present Australia as a nation of racist idiots. And the fact that it had been attributed to a psychiatrist, well ...


2. Why did you decide to write in about it?

    A reader sent me the email address for the Chicago Tribune's public editor, Don Wycliff, so I dashed off a quick note.


3. Were you surprised when the Tribune followed up and when they cut Schmetzer loose?

   Very surprised, and impressed. 
   The Tribune could very easily have ignored this. After all, why should they care what some lone emailer from Australia thinks? 
  It shows how seriously the paper treats its coverage.


4. Schmetzer has been a foreign correspondent in Australia for some time. Had you ever noticed anything suspicious in other articles?

    I'd never heard of the man before now.
   A search revealed that a couple of other sites had pulled him up for perceived errors but nothing quite as blatant as the Australia quote. [On Blair’s blog, he promises to now turn his attention to a Schmetzer claim from a November 2002 article that in the 1980s, many Australian homes “were carpeted with kangaroo skins.”]


5. Have you played policeman for any other publications?

   All the time, more for my own entertainment than anything else. 
   I'm a former Time magazine senior editor (at the Australian edition), so I have some background in judging copy word-by-word.


6. You may have heard of our notorious New York Times plagiarist/liar on this side of the Pacific, Jayson Blair. Any ironies in a Blair bringing to light a blunder by a major U.S. paper?

   Finally -- the Blair name is avenged!