TV Reporter Denies Creating Fake Sand Storm...After Seemingly Being Caught Creating Fake Sand Storm

Journalism can be so tough sometimes. You can be working on a story for hours, days, weeks sometimes, only to find out at the last second that a tip was wrong, that things aren't as they seem, or that you completely missed your window of opportunity. And that latter point seems to be what happened to a Romanian TV reporter sent to cover a sand storm. The only problem? He was a little late. But it appears he didn't let that get into the way of his story.

Here's what I mean (from the Austrian Times):

A red-faced TV reporter who thought he was onto a shore thing as he faked a sand storm when he missed the real thing has become a laughing stock in Romania after his cameraman let viewers in on the stunt.

Wait, what? Did the outlet just say he was caught "faking" a sand storm? Yes, and that his cameraman caught it on video:

If you can't translate, here's what the reporter is saying:

"The wind blows with incredible power, there are moments when it is impossible to stand up here.

"The wind blows the sand at over 60 km per hour. The wind blew away the beach umbrellas and the tourists had to leave in a hurry," he added in the live report from the country's Black Sea coast.

Now after seeing the video and reading his quotes, you would think the reporter would come clean. But he's not. Instead, he's insisting it was all just a joke:

Yesterday the channel insisted the report was genuine.

The reporter claimed: "The report was not doctored in any way. It was a bad joke made by the cameraman."

There seems to be little question in most people's minds that it was fake. But lets play along for second. The question then becomes: Was the fake sandstorm being created (because there was a fake one being created) meant to appear to be the actual sandstorm, or was it simply a joke like he says?

And then that brings us to this point: sure the actual report was "genuine" -- it wasn't intended to be a gag -- but then what's most egregious is that the reporter seems to be faking a story during a genuine report. So the news agency and the reporter could be technically right. But that doesn't mean it wasn't wrong.