So another day, another journalist who fabricated stories. Sacramento Bee columnist Diana Griego Erwin resigned Wednesday amid an inquiry into whether several of the people she quoted actually existed.
Erwin is the fourth Sacramento Bee journalist to leave under a cloud in recent years. TV columnist Bob Wisehart was fired in April 1994 for plagarism; political reporter Dennis Love was fired in November 2000 for plagarism and making up a source; and sports reporter Jim Van Vliet was fired in August 2003 for reporting on a S.F. Giants game by watching television and including old, unattributed quotes from other news outlets.
Earlier this week, Wired News said it couldn’t confirm whether 24 people quoted by freelancer Michelle Delio existed. From Adam Penenberg’s amazing report:
Delio quoted Keith Caron, a “19-year-old New York University student.” When we checked with NYU’s registrar’s office, we learned that no Keith Caron was enrolled at NYU, either now or last semester, when the story appeared. … Delio gave us a telephone number for Keith Caron … We left numerous messages for Caron with a person who answered the phone but declined to give his name. When I did a reverse lookup at AnyWho.com, I found that the number is listed under the name Fred Gorski (http://www.fairplaytv.com/nyttext.htm), a former female impersonator and cross-dresser consultant, who shows men how to act like women.
Technology Review has also retracted two stories by Delio, while InfoWorld has edited four of Delio’s stories to remove anonymous sources.
I compilied this list of 20 U.S. journalists canned for who have fabricated articles in the last 10 years:
- Jack Kelley, the former USA Today reporter.
- Jayson Blair.
- Christopher Newton. Made up sources in at least 40 Associated Press dispatches and was fired in 2002.
- Stephen Glass, busted in 1998 for fabricating hundreds of details in New Republic stories.
- Patricia Smith. Boston Globe columnist forced to resign in 1998 after making up sources.
- Mike Barnicle. Boston Globe columnist resigned in 1999 after reconstructing dialogue from people he’d never spoken with.
- Barbara Stewart. Boston Globe freelancer fabricated large portions of April 2005 seal hunt story.
- Julie Amparano. High-profile Arizona Republic columnist fired Aug. 1999 after being suspected of making up sources. (She quoted a “Jennifer Morgan” four times, each with a different occupation, and the newspaper could not verify a total of 20 of 65 people that she quoted existed.)
- Jay Forman. Embellished Slate “monkeyfishing” article.
- Rodney Rothman. Embellished New Yorker “My Fake Job” article. Recently subject of flattering NYT article. Says he never considered himself a journalist in the first place; has book out.
- Michael Finkel. Embellished NYT Magazine story on African laborer Youssouf Malé, actually a composite.
- Brian Walski. LA Times photog doctored Iraq photo in 2003. Fired, will now works in commercial photography. “This was after an extremely long, hot and stressful day,” Walski wrote in an email to colleagues, “but I offer no excuses here…”
- Eric Drudis. After Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism wire service retracted two stories written by the 21-year-old in Jan. 2001, the San Jose Mercury News and Philadelphia Daily News found they couldn’t verify that some of the people Drudis had quoted as an intern really existed.
- Dennis Love. “The bottom line is, I did the wrong thing and the Bee did the right thing,” Love told the San Francisco Chronicle. He told AJR that his misdeeds may have been motivated by “a reluctance to turn in a mediocre story… You don’t want to be ordinary.”
- Steven Helmer. Fired from the Press Enterprise of Pennsylvania in Feb. 2001 after admitting fabricating a name and quote for a story about a shopping mall.
- Kim Stacy. Fired from the Messenger-Inquirer of Owensboro, Ky. in May 1999 after she fabricated columns about her supposed battles with cancer. She never had cancer.
- Brad Smith. Tampa Tribune reporter fired in April 2005 after making up an anecdote about a woman who had her Jeep towed while visiting nightclubs.
- Uli Schmetzer. Chicago Tribune freelancer made up the name and occupation of a source he quoted in one of his stories in 2004.
- Diana Griego Erwin
- Michelle Delio
(The list isn’t in any particular order, and I’m sure I’ve missed people… but I think it’s fairly comprehensive. Does not include plagarism allegations)
It’s a sobering list, to be sure. This isn’t much of a defense, but as I wrote on Antimedia’s site, there are approximately 24,500 reporters working at daily newspapers. I daresay most people have never heard of Diana Griego Erwin, or read anything she ever wrote.
As a reporter, I don’t think journalists are any more or less ethical than American workers in general. There are bad apples in any line of work. But as Jay Rosen says, the most shocking thing about the Jayson Blair scandal is how readers who knew what was going on but didn’t bother to call because they “expected that the editors wouldn’t care.” (Or, worse, they did call, and didn’t get any response).
Our readers will continue to be our most important fact-checkers — and we need to make it easier for them to reach us. Publishing email addresses isn’t nearly good enough. We need to be interacting publicly with our readers — hopefully assuaging not only the concerns of an individual reader , but also demonstrating to everyone who cares to listen that we take our customers’ complaints seriously.
I can’t believe you missed Eric Slater who just got fired from the LA Times for fabricating the now infamous Chcio State story only days after David Shaw of the LA Times claimed bloggers were incapable of real journalism. He then bragged about the LA Times and its four layers of filters and editors.
But what is more important are the countless reporters and columnists who lie and fabricate – but their newspapers still refuse to even print corrections of their errors, much less fire or even reprimand them. And now the LA Times is even doing their best to HIDE the few corrections they do make from their readers with their new web design.
Brady Westwater
ww.lacowboy.blogspot.com
Brady, I didn’t actually forget about Slater. But it’s not clear to me whether he actually fabricated anything, or just was extremely sloppy.
Some people see dishonesty in anyone who disagrees with them. But can you give actual examples of reporters who make up quotes, or invent people, and aren’t fired?
I do agree that newspapers are need to be better about how they handle corrections on their websites.
First, I make a very clear distinction between sloppiness – which is rampant – and lying. Second, I enjoy reading peple whose opinions disagree with my own – and prefer to have my ideas challenged than to read people who agree with me.
But I do have a real problem with people who knowingly lie and the newspapers who cover up for them OR newspaper editors who ‘lie’ when they refuse to correct errors then they are proven to be errors.
This is just to clarify the ground rules.
Lastly, as I said, I am in a very difficult position in that I have to deal with the press in my various civic activities on a daily basis. I often talk to reporters (many of whom I consider to be friends), usually for background, 3 or 4 times a day. This make it impossible for me to do my work – making LA a better city to live in for all its citizens – if I were to call out every reporter who I know who has crossed the line. Hence, I usually limit my public attacks to the editors and publishers of the Times.
But to give one recent example, if you read my Tuesday April 19th post on Mike Davis (and April 20th, 23rd, 24th) you will see how Mike Davis – just made up a pretty major ‘fact’ (according to Mike, the housing bubble has burst in San Francisco, in case you have not heard) – as he has done hundreds of times in the past (including the total fabrication of a several page interview) – but yet the LA Times will not only not correct this lie, their reader’s rep will not even answer lettters asking if they are going to consider correcting it.
To give another example of ‘editor lying’. when an LA Times article mistakenly said two years ago that 40% of the homeless on skid row were women and children, they also refused to correct that blunder, even after the article was proven to be wildly off the mark with that claim. I might add that I bring that up because, in a recent debate bewteen the candidates for Mayor, one of them not only quoted that ‘fact’, but he even further strayed from the truth by saying that 40% of the homeless were single women with dependent children. And of course, the LA TImes refused to point out that that was not correct when he said it, either.
Brady Westwater
bradywestwater@gmail.com
http://www.lacowboy.blogspot.com
Okay, I looked up that Mike Davis article on Nexis. Yes, in the 12th paragraph of a story clearly labeled as commentary, Davis wrote,
At worst, this is a statement of opinion unsupported by the facts. Calling it a “lie” is playing fast and loose with the truth yourself, IMHO. And looking around on google, there does seem to be some evidence that a housing bubble has burst in S.F.
I also looked for the article on the homeless, but couldn’t find it on Nexis. (I imagine I wasn’t using the correct search terms). But that figure doesn’t seem that different from the ones that can be found here.
“statement of opinion unsupported by the facts’?
If you read my links, the housing boom in San Francisco shows not even the slightest sign of even slowing down – much less crashing, much less that it already has crashed. There is not a single economic fact that supports what Mike Davis said; that the housing bubble has already crashed.
As for the site you cited, it did not mention a single example of housing prices in any way declining in San Francisco, much less that they have already declined. It is just an example of a website with a totally fake headline (and there are thousands of these sites out there) that leads the gullible to it when they GOOGLE the phrase. The site has many mistatements – to be charitable – and, again, zero evidence cited of any housing market decline in San Francisco, since no decline has happened!
Again, how can saying that the bubble has already collapsed not be a lie when prices in San Francisco are going up every month, homes sales are at record numbers, foreclosures are NOT going up in the San Francisco, down payments are remaining stable and every one of these facts is easily proven with hard core, real world data on the links I provided.
And, again, this is a writer with a long history of making up facts hundreds of times and even fabricating an entire interview in the LA Weekly, which even the LA Weekly admitted in an article. He also once wrote a book in which his chapter on Bunker Hill dramatically contradicted the facts (including dates, names, etc.) – and he then cited his own earlier essay as the source for his facts, and the facts in that essay – were – correct!
Also, my main point was that the LA Times refuses to correct his statement, even though they have done that for other opinion columns recently.
Lastly, there is a difference between well researched, documented facts, which I supplied, and quoting the first source one can find on Google that agrees with a particular point of view.
As for the truth of the homeless population on LA’s skid row – where I happen to live and work, BTW, I would be glad to supply you with the facts, if you are interested.
Brady Westwater
http://www.lacowboy.blogspot.com
In a totally unrelated matter, I wanted to point out an issue with the three missing boys in NJ that were found in the trunk of a car. Why was there no Amber alert for these three boys?
Was this due to their ethnicity or was it class status. This is a question that the local police and city officials should be asked? The issue should be talked about in the media.
I just got back from that story, actually. Spent three days in Camden! (well, okay, I slept in Philly). I did not think to ask why they didn’t issue an Amber alert. (Possibly because there was no evidence of abduction?) I arrived after the kids had already been found.
But I will say, the family was very satisfied with how hard the police worked to find these kids. They told stories of officers working through the night to look for them, going without meals, etc. Also, after the boys were found, the police chief spent most of the night with one of the mothers.