Freelance journalist, Tommaso Debenedetti, a bearded, curly-haired young hipster with a goofy expression, FABRICATED out of thin air Interviews with Top Selling US  Authors Philip Roth and John Grisham, that were critical of President Obama, and that appeared in Libero,  Il Resto del Carlino, La Nazione, and Il Giorno, and an op-ed piece in Corriere della Sera, that  praised the frankness of Roth’s critique of Obama. Since the Inquiry, Debenedetti has been "unavailable" 

This reminds me a lot of our own, Judith Miller whose journalism had come under intense criticism with accusations that she had become a shill for the Bush administration. This criticism generally followed the line that her reporting of cherry-picked intelligence favorable to the administration's pro-war positions prior to the Iraq war reflected an uncomfortable "entanglement" with administration officials.

Miller would claim that WMDs had been found in Iraq,  that trailers found in Iraq had been proven to be mobile weapons labs. 
 A  later Times  editorial acknowledged that  articles that justified the Iraq Invasion had relied too heavily on Chalabi and other Iraqi exiles bent on regime change. It also regretted that "information that was controversial [was] allowed to stand unchallenged". It was noted that ten of the twelve flawed stories discussed had been written by Miller. Miller soon after "left" the Times.

Federal Judge Thomas F. Hogan found Miller in contempt of court for refusing to appear before a federal grand jury, which was investigating who had leaked to reporters the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative. Judge Hogan sentenced her to 18 months in jail.
Miller  "caved" after three months and named Gordon Libby, who was later convicted, and then pardoned by Geo Bush. 

In September , 2007, Miller was hired at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a neo-conservative think tank. In October  2008 Fox News (Fair and Balanced reporting?) hired Miller. The Reward for working the US into a frenzy to start a $1Trillion Invasion, and getting 4000+ US Troops killed and the wanton destruction. free-market. 

Counterfeit Roth
The New Yorker by Judith Thurman;  April 5, 2010 

Last month, Paola Zanuttini, a journalist from La Repubblica, the progressive Roman newspaper, interviewed Philip Roth about his latest novel, "The Humbling" which has recently been published in Italian. "We had a lively and intelligent conversation about my fiction," Roth said. The Q. & A. ran on February 26th, as the cover story of Il Venerdì -La Repubblica’s  Friday magazine- with a fierce-looking closeup portrait of Roth, and the title "Sex and Me". Zanuttini focussed on the relationships of Roth’s aging protagonists with their much younger inamoratas, the feminist response to them, and his own marriages and romances. "Your descriptions of sex are ruthless," she asserted. “Ruthless?" he countered. She backed down a little: "They describe things as they are, raw and naked." "I am pleased by the notion that I can still be scandalous," he said. "I thought I had lost that magic." 
The real scandal revealed by the interview, however, came at the end, when Zanuttini asked Roth why he was so "disappointed" with Barack Obama. She translated, aloud, remarks attributed to him in an article by a freelance journalist, Tommaso Debenedetti, that was published last November in Libero, a tabloid notably sympathetic to Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy (who is embroiled in his own sex scandals with much younger women). "It appears that you find him nasty, vacillating, and mired in the mechanics of power". Zanuttini said. "But I have never said anything of the kind!" Roth objected. "It is completely contrary to what I think. Obama, in my opinion, is fantastic". He had never heard of Debenedetti, or of Libero. The interview, with its bitter judgment of Obama’s banality, failure, and empty rhetoric about hope and change, was a complete fabrication. 
The Italian blogosphere quickly and gleefully picked up the story. Libero’s  editor grudgingly expressed embarrassment, and its Web site took down the interview. Debenedetti turned off his cell phone and dropped out of sight. (The only Facebook page bearing the writer’s name shows a bearded, curly-haired young hipster with a goofy expression.) Roth, however, was curious about him. "I went online to do some research". he said. He discovered that Debenedetti had claimed to possess recordings of their "telephone conversation," but, Roth said, “he couldn’t find the tapes".  An op-ed piece in Corriere della Sera, Italy’s newspaper of record, had praised the frankness of Roth’s critique of Obama, contrasting it to the pusillanimity of Italians in calling their own leader to account. "But what I was really looking for". Roth continued, "were other interviews by Debenedetti, and I found one, with John Grisham, that was published in three newspapers" "Il Resto del Carlino  and La Nazione, both conservative, and Il Giorno, which is centrist." They contained the same sort of denunciations, which sounded implausible to me." (“Last year’s enthusiasm is remote now",  Grisham allegedly told Debenedetti. "People are angry with Obama for having done little or nothing and having promised too much.") 
Roth asked his agent, Andrew Wylie, to contact Grisham’s agent, David Gernert, and, sure enough, the Grisham "interview" proved to be another hoax. Like Roth, Grisham took the trouble to double-check his press contacts, and found no record of Debenedetti. "I was more shocked than angered", he wrote in an e-mail.... As for Obama, both Grisham and his wife, Renée (a Hillary Clinton superdelegate), were, after the nomination, "on board, and still are"
“You have to wonder what the guy was thinking". Roth concluded. "The best explanation I can find is that this obscure freelancer had hit upon a way of selling articles by attributing anti-Obama sentiments to famous American writers. It was a good gimmick, and he probably had fun. But I can’t imagine what he’ll do now "surely his career is over" 
Although Roth and Grisham have never met, they joined forces through their agents and contacted an Italian lawyer, who felt that they had a good case. "I am exploring my possible remedies". Grisham said, "with plans to file an action".  But Roth has decided not to sue. "It would take two years, and multiple trips to Italy". he said. "It would distract me from my writing, and, worst of all, I would have to obsess about it." Asked if he thought that Debenedetti was a would-be Moishe Pipik, the doppelgänger in Roth’s novel "Operation Shylock" who impersonates the Philip Roth character, he said, "No, that was literature, this is merely life, and I certainly did a better job of imposturing"  ?
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/04/05/100405ta_talk_thurman
 

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