Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 10 November 2008 14:50
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Adam Smith, a British reporter volunteering to help the Obama campaign
and file at story for his newspaper was caught on camera seemingly
admitting to plagiarism, abruptly resigning and dissing the
publications and people he worked for – all while drunk. He’s now the
latest newly unemployed YouTube sensation!
It’s all over the news: the druken rant that was posted to the Internet, causing the man filmed to lose his job, make a bit of a fool of himself and with an opportunity to launch into Internet stardom.
Quite how to do that is likely on the mind of Adam Smith, who is no longer a reporter for UK publications the Birmingham Mail, the Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Sunday Mercury.
The UK’s
Times Online has the story and still viewable video of Smith, aka Steve Zacharanda, in Miami for a week while volunteering for Obama’s US election campaign.
Smith had promised his employers an article on the election, and after a long day and night, and seemingly a bit too much to drink, he set off to write his article – on the street. He must have had wireless broadband or had planned on uploading the article when he got back to an Internet connection.
The Times says that a Dutch “amateur journalist" from
Couscous Global called “Maartje” came upon Smith and asked him what he was doing.
Smith
explained he was “a little bit pissed”, suggesting he was copying and pasting from the BBC, resigned from his job to set up his “own magazine” and told his employers “F**k you, I'm doing what I want."
Smith
responded the next morning in a video of his own (which has now been removed), explaining he didn’t really remember the video, that he had done an “18-hour shift”, hadn’t “cut and pasted anything”, inviting users to check the BBC and that he was only joking.
What happened next?! Continued on page 2...
