The suicide of Romanian singer Mădălina Manole catches press agency AGERPRES on the wrong foot

What do you do when a press agency with reputation and tradition like AGERPRES tries to pretend it interviewed Mădălina Manole and releases it into its news stream under the title "The most precious gift for Mădălina Manole is her little boy Petru", just before she commits suicide?

The incident is terrible anyway - a celebrity leaves its child orphaned -, but the press agency pushes it further into infamy: the interview never actually took place.

The agency yesterday said: "In this case, we are investigating the chief-editor of the Central News Office, Marina Bădulescu, the one who drew up and published, on Tuesday, July 13th, of her own accord, the news titled < The most precious gift for Mădălina Manole is her little boy Petru >, in which she used fragments of the singer"s older statements made to AGERPRES, as well as several pieces of information published on the singer"s weblog.

We want to apologize for the omission, which under certain circumstances could have been misinterpreted."

Apologies may work for readers, but mean nothing to us journalists.

For information professionals, this kind of blunder is inexcusable when it involves a news agency.

As journalists, we have the professional obligation of providing verified information and to follow guidelines and procedures for certifying its accuracy.

That is why sometimes we get in trouble (and even when we have the proof to back or claims, we still get harassed in court and, more than once, unfairly convicted).

Of course, just like in any other profession, there are jerks among journalists as well.

The case of the American journalist who wrote his stories from all over the US, while sitting comfortably in his armchair at home and who received a major international award for his writings, sparked a huge scandal a few years ago.

Some time before, a Romanian economic publication had delighted us with a detailed presentation of a concert that had not even taken place, because it had been rescheduled.

And now, the lowly and amateurish manipulations of the so-called "news TV stations" aren"t fooling anybody anymore - we only look at them as parodies of journalism.

It is, however, the first time that the fraud is perpetrated not by a press body, but by an honorable news agency.

Apologies don"t work with journalists.

For journalists, the news from an agency"s stream are "news" - meaning information that is provided based on all the rules and professional procedures, which we can even use in our defense when we get to court.

AGERPRES should apologize to little Petru.

Not to us.