In Vino Veritas

This is a 2000 years old Latin saying that I am sure most of you are familiar with: "In wine lies the truth".

Yesterday, the Times of London published a story based on a YouTube clip by a Dutch journalist who caught a drunken British journalist making several confessions on tape.



Classical example of "in vino veritas".

This video brought memories of my time as a journalist in Israel, right after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when I was a stringer for a couple of journalists from the widely respected Brazilian newspaper O Estado de São Paulo - first Nelson Santos, and later Mario Chimanovitch.

Santos was a very knowledgeable journalist who had been covering Israel and the Middle East conflict for many years, and who had been asked to write for that newspaper under a pseudonym, as he also wrote for Jornal do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro under his real name, Nahum Sirotsky.
After the 1973 war Israel's fortunes changed, and the same happened to many people, including some journalists. Nahum was "gently" removed from his assignments in both Brazilian newspapers, and O Estado de São Paulo started looking for a replacement. Mario Chimanovitch was chosen. The story of how this happened is interesting: Mario was that newspaper's correspondent in the remote Pantanal area (the mid-west swamp region of Brazil). The editor-in-chief - Julio Mesquita - was on vacation in that area, and Mario was his host. As Mario recounted to me later, he was in a boat with Mesquita, when he was offered the job to replace Nelson in Israel. This was around April/May 1974.

In July of that year I came home to Tel Aviv, back from a trip to Brazil, and found a note at my door: "I am the new correspondent of O Estado de São Paulo in Israel, and I need your help. Please call me asap. Mario".

Next day I met Mario, who asked me to become his stringer as he knew nothing about Israel, the Middle East, and the only language he spoke other than Portuguese, was a broken French. And, yes, he also told me that he was a Marxist. I thought to myself that this was clearly a situation where I could be of help.
I worked for Mario for just a short period. I could not withstand the fact that he was what we called "a scissors journalist", an expression that later was replaced by "a cut and paste journalist" as we can see in the YouTube video mentioned at the beginning of this story.
As Mario would finish cutting and pasting his story (based on French left-wing newspapers, to match his ideology and the only language he new), he would meet me so that I would review, offer my suggestions (seldom accepted because it was not in line with his ideology) and make it factually correct. I recall when one night I came home about 1 AM, and found a note: "I could not find you, here is the article I already sent". After I read it and noticed some blatant mistakes, I called him and told him to call the newspaper asking them to wait because a revised copy would be sent. We then met at the UPI office, where we used to telex the article to the newspaper - the article was corrected and sent.
Shortly after I quit my work for him.

Back to the drunken journalist; if you see the tape, you will not only notice that "cut and paste" side of journalism (which I believe is more prevalent than you may think) but also, and perhaps more importantly, the following statement: "the readers of the Birmingham Mail are going to get my version of history".

A journalist's opinion is not to be confused with a journalist's "version of history". Unfortunately, throughout the years, from before 1973, to 2008 and years to come, many versions of history have and will been presented under the guise of "opinion", and many factual reports have been and will be distorted so that the journalist can disseminate his/her version of history.

It is incumbent that we as readers, be as informed as we can, and read from as many sources as we can, so that we can distinguish between facts and one individual's version of history. And then, reach our own conclusion on how history was made.