Journalists and PRs have changed their habits around verifying sources in the wake of a Press Gazette investigation which revealed that one of the UK’s most widely-quoted psychologists does not exist.
Barbara Santini’s main online presence is on profiles connected with a sex toys website and CBD retailers. Press Gazette revealed in April how a PR working for these businesses duped multiple publishers into quoting Santini by responding to journalist questions posted on services like ResponseSource and Qwoted.
When Press Gazette made contact with Santini via Whatsapp we were threatened with legal action if we pursued our coverage. Press Gazette has not heard from Santini’s lawyers and she has not been quoted again in the media since Press Gazette’s report on 7 April. Multiple stories have been taken down and amended.
However, PR companies continue to deploy fake experts apparently using AI-generated responses.
Freelance journalist Rosie Taylor explained that in response to one query via a journalist response service, she received three near-identical responses in the same email format with identical headshots, all at the same time.
While she remains unsure whether the people are real, she said she was convinced the quotes are AI-generated, and now insists on phoning every expert in order to verify them.
She told Press Gazette: “In an ideal world, journalists would always research their interviewees first and then interview them on a call or face-to-face, but the reality is many of us are under huge pressure to turn copy around quickly and quote multiple experts on a wide variety of topics, so getting the occasional comment over email makes life a whole lot easier.”
Taylor said she received the identical responses 24 hours after submitting a journalist request – but the emails did not appear to come via the service she used.
Taylor, who also edits the media pitching advice newsletter Get Featured, said that the experts had little relation to the story. Among those who responded to her request about car hire were an AI/SEO company, a graphic design company and a lighting business.
She said: “I’ve recently received quite a few clearly AI-generated quotes from potentially fictitious experts after putting out calls for expert comment. Luckily I know how to spot them before they get anywhere near my copy but it’s frustrating having to weed out real comments and experts from fake ones.”
She said she will now only take comments via email if she knows and trusts the expert or press office, or can verify them via phone.
Journalists need to be vigilant even when it comes to telephone interviews with apparently real people. Last week The Telegraph withdrew a case-study interview brokered with a financial services PR after it turned out that the man (a rich banker who claimed to be struggling with schools fees) had deceived the journalist about their identity.
Holly Pither, founder and managing director of Tribe PR, said she has seen an increase in journalists demanding to verify the sources they speak to are real people.
She said she now supplies a biography, photo, and Linkedin or website bio link for all sources, but speaking to a news agency they demanded further verification.
She told Press Gazette: “A respected press outlet, seeking a mental health and trauma commentator, requested an additional verification step to those mentioned above.
“After we submitted our client’s approved comments, the journalist then asked us to have the client email them directly to confirm the authenticity and approval of the statement. This was the first time I had come across this.”
She said: “This increased vigilance comes as no surprise and I think more rigorous checks will become the norm. If I was a journalist, I would be making sure each comment was written by a real, reputable human – and one who knows their subject matter inside out.”
She said she believes that both PR people and journalists may need to find new ways to work – such as delivering quotes in the form of Whatsapp voice notes.
Inside the fake people industry
Press Gazette also spoke to two people with inside knowledge of the creation of ‘fake people’ – one of them a former employee of a London sex shop Peaches and Screams, which supplied many newspapers with quotes from non-existent ‘experts’ and which appeared in the bio for Barbara Santini.
The employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, discussed how workers at the sex shop knew that experts such as Dr Charlotte Cremers (quoted in the Metro on the subject of “having too much sex”) “did not exist”.
He also gave the names of various other “experts” who employees had submitted quotes from who he said were all fictional
The employee claims that the now infamous Barbara Santini was never available for calls or in-person meetings and submitted a copy via emails and Whatsapp messages alone.
He said: “I did think there could be something unusual about her. There could be more to say about that.”
The reason the owners of the sex shop were keen to submit quotes to publishers was to build reputation with Google for SEO.
Google’s ranking algorithms rank sites on what is known as ‘E-E-A-T’ – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust.
This means, for example, that a recipe site will rank higher if it contains content from a named cookery expert who has proven expertise in the field – but this has meant that some sites game the system and create fake experts to boost their ranking.
Following Press Gazette’s revelations, Google last month announced a crackdown on sites with ‘fake’ EEAT content, amending guidelines to penalise: “A webpage or website with “fake” owner or content creator profiles. For example, AI generated content with made up ‘author’ profiles (AI generated images or deceptive creator descriptions) in order to make it appear that the content is written by people.”
By having experts featured in real publications, the sites hope to build ‘off-site’ SEO, boosting the reputation of fake experts, and thus the site’s search ranking.
SEO experts told how to game system at major conference
Emma-Elizabeth Byrne, director of publishing at Gentoo Media, said that sites sometimes have “no choice” but to rely on such tactics if they want to rank highly.
Byrne gave a speech titled “Fake EEAT Till You Make EEAT” at this year’s Brighton SEO conference, outlining tactics for creating fake people.
The speech provoked a significant backlash online.
Byrne said Google’s latest crackdown on fake profiles proves that profiles are a “ranking factor” for websites, and will mean that more SEO experts are tempted to create “fake people”.
She said: “If you’re smart about this, and you’re doing this well, then you’re going to have a fully realised account. A very weak profile is going to be marked as spam very quickly.
“But there are some very well made profiles that slip the net and are really hard to gauge whether or not it’s a real person or not.”
Byrne said that SEO experts are now creating profiles with Linkedin pages, and that the best are almost undetectable.
She said: “I put across what could be done with authors on profiles that were fake, because I was explaining in my situation where we’ve had no choice sometimes other than to rely on fake ones in order to hit EEAT metrics, which, despite what Google says, is a ranking factor.”
She said businesses such as flower shops can easily find people to author content, but others such as casinos and gambling sites struggle – and the temptation to create “fake profiles” is very real.
She said there have been negative reactions to her speech but that not every site can afford to be “fully white-hat” (white hat refers to ethical behaviour in occupations such as hacking, as opposed to ‘black hat’ which uses unethical or illegal practices).
She said: “People will always have opinions about SEO and content. What I said isn’t really out of this world. It was putting across what the possibilities are with profiles.”
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