Days after Clare “chk-chk boom” Werbeloff was exposed as a fraud online, the Australian newspapers have finally caught up.
According to reports, “she has also signed a contract with Channel Nine’s A Current Affair and is likely to appear tomorrow night” and that she wouldn’t be speaking to any other media outlet.
That would be the same Channel Nine that published her false account to begin with.
Here’s the things I can’t work out. The video on YouTube was placed. Nine doesn’t have an official YouTube account, at least that I can see, and the account holding the video thanks two other people for giving them the video…oh, and it links to Ninemsn. Note the no YouTube account isn’t surprising, Nine, through its relationship with Microsoft publishes things directly on NineMSN through the MSN video hosting platform.
Next: Nine probably could have pulled the video on copyright grounds: they didn’t. They could have driven traffic to the official video on NineMSN….they didn’t.
Last: if Claire wasn’t a witness (and wasn’t originally at the location when the shooting took place) how did she end up being interviewed to begin with? Nine interviewed other people, surely the odd witness statement from Claire would have been a give away that something was amiss (and remember, there was no “skinny wog,” the guy shot was built like a brick shithouse.)
So the question then becomes: was Nine in on this from the beginning? And if so, why?
Are we going to end up with some sort of story about how social media can’t be trusted perhaps?
One thing is for sure: we won’t get the full story on ACA Monday. What we’ll get it more lies and more spin, after all this whole thing started at a PR agency.
Update: I should add on the YouTube account, there was nothing untoward about it…but that’s the problem. The placement is too random…it’s too out of place. It’s the sort of account I’d pick if I wanted to go under the radar on questions, but likewise an account that wouldn’t have found the clip by itself.
