After the interview, Koch returned to the offices of WENN and the tape of his interview was transcribed in preparation for editing. It was then that Harrison's health took a decided turn for the worse.
The agency's news editor, James Desborough, took a look at the interview. Apparently without consulting his bosses or any other senior executives at the agency, he seems to have decided that the benign response offered by Sir George to the question about Harrison's health might be the basis for a headline-grabbing story. After Desborough worked on it, a fabricated quote appeared in the story. Martin's original quote read "he has an indomitable spirit"; the new quote contained the words "but he knows that he is going to die soon." The rest of the story was filled out with suitably adjusted quotes from Sir George and repetition of speculation from unnamed sources about Harrison's health.
Out of the 27 answers to the 27 questions asked by Koch during the interview, Desborough had selected just one. Out of the 2,169 words spoken by Sir George in the 40-minute interview, Desborough had extracted 105.
Now it was time to go to market. Desborough soon sold the piece to the Mail on Sunday, which received the story on Friday, July 20. At that point it consisted of just 365 words. The WENN story ended with the internal code (CK/WN/ES), CK being the initials of original interviewer Christian Koch. Desborough apparently did not add his initials.
When I spoke to Desborough about the story last week, all he had to say was: "George Martin is on tape. We got him." USA Today reporter Ann Oldenburg contacted WENN the day after the Mail story broke and reported in the Tuesday, July 24, issue of USA Today: "A spokesman for chief executive Jonathan Ashby said that the Martin interview, which took place for 40-minutes on Wednesday, was on tape and '100 percent nailed.'" WENN has thus far been unable to find any individual in its office who has confessed to giving that quote.
At the Mail on Sunday the story was assigned to writer Katie Nicholl. The "George Harrison is close to death" headline was followed up with a plethora of detail, some of it factual, much of it conjecture, spin and innuendo. Scattered through the piece were quotations from Desborough's story.
Nicholl reengineered Sir George's already much-cantilevered words to have the knight of the realm say the never-uttered words twice in her article, though the story she had received from WENN had only used the fabrication once: "He has an indomitable spirit but he knows that he is going to die soon." Nicholl quoted Sir George more or less accurately as saying, "He has been near death many times and he's been rescued many times as well," then added the fabricated quote "but he knows that he is going to die soon and he's accepting it perfectly happily."
In what Nicholl claimed to me is "standard practice" in journalism, her story stated that the interview had been given to the paper directly. The paragraph with the first of the erroneous comments starts with the words "Sir George told the Mail on Sunday."
When I asked why this was done when it was clearly wording that could mislead readers into having greater faith in the credibility of the story, Nicholl told me, "If we have an exclusive interview, we reserve the right to say that the person spoke to us."
Oh.
The article was larded with emotionally loaded phrases that were not based on any quote, just the writer's ungrounded speculation. Phrases such as "Harrison has admitted"; "Harrison made the emotional confession that he does not have long to live"; "the star put on a brave face"; "Harrison is now facing up to the prospect of death."
And then there were the anonymous "sources" claiming that he "lost half a lung in the operation." And that unnamed "doctors at the clinic admitted." And that "according to experts the long-term prognosis for Harrison is not good" -- these experts being unnamed people who had not seen Harrison or his medical records.
And what of the opportunity for a reaction from Harrison's representatives prior to printing this story? After all, the paper was announcing his imminent death to the world. A senior representative of the Mail on Sunday told me that he could not be quoted, so I cannot use the exact words. But the essence of the paper's position is that it is not always possible to contact a celebrity on a weekend, and that's the celebrity's tough luck.
It might have been prudent to wait until the following Monday, July 23, and get a response from Harrison. The story, complete with reaction and any denial, could then have been placed in Tuesday's Daily Mail without the fabric of the universe rupturing over the 48-hour delay. In any event, the decision to publish was made without reaching any representative of Harrison to seek his reaction. Nor did the paper seek a representative of Sir George to check the quote.
Next page: "He told me that his boss had taken the tapes off him and manipulated the story without his consent"