The Sunday Mail
Sunday Mail Reporter
Police have launched a probe to fish out a local journalist who allegedly worked with a New York Times scribe based in Kenya to fabricate quotes attributed to President Mugabe.
National Police Spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba yesterday said the law would take its course against the culprit who sought to tarnish relations between Harare and Nairobi.
New York Times Kenya Bureau Chief Jeffrey Gettleman recently published an article alleging that President Mugabe had labelled Kenyans as “thieves”.
The journalist has since written an e-mail of apology to authorities in Harare for using ‘fake’ quotes from a satirical website, spectator.co.ke whose authenticity he says were assured by an unnamed local journalist.
The police say they have launched investigations to bring the local journalist to book.
“Following revelations by The Chronicle on Friday 13th November 2015 that Jeffery Gettleman, the Kenya Bureau Chief of New York Times, had confirmed the publication of a false story and offered a public apology to His Excellence, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Head of State and Government and Commander in Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the Zimbabwe Republic Police has already instituted investigations in order to identify these errant and unprofessional journalists who deliberately decided to feed the nation and the world at large with false reports about His Excellence, Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe,” said Snr Asst Comm Charamba.
“Police are eager to identify the local journalist who worked with Jeffery Gettleman in the false story. The law will certainly take its course on the culprits.”
Snr Asst Comm Charamba said those who have the information that can help with investigations can contact the CID department.
In the said article published on November 5, the New York Times quoted the President as having said that “those people of East Africa shock me with their wizardry of stealing. You can even think that there is a subject in their universities called Bachelor of Stealing.”
President Mugabe, it was further claimed, “told his countrymen to be on ‘high alert’ in case they visited Kenya” because “they might infect you with that disease”.
Gettleman came under a barrage of attacks on Twitter after Presidential Spokesperson Mr George Charamba exposed the lie and accused him of disrespecting Africans, thereby leading to the retraction of the story.
