P
Pookie
Guest
August 16, 2007
It's Not Just Scott Beauchamp
By Randall Hoven
"Matt Drudge's role in the Monica Lewinski scandal] strikes me as a new
and graphic power of the Internet to influence mainstream journalism. And I
suspect that over the next couple of years that impact will grow to the
point where it will damage journalism's ability to do its job
professionally, to check out information before publication, to be mindful
of the necessity to publish and broadcast reliable, substantiated
information." -- Marvin Kalb in 1998
Scott Beauchamp was the last straw. I realized that I need a scorecard to
keep track of all the fallen journalists, journalistic mistakes and major
and minor screw-ups in the media. I couldn't find one already made,
although Wikipedia came close, so I started my own. I apologize if there is
a good list already out there, but I looked and could not find.
Offenses include lying and fabricating, doctoring photos, plagiarism,
conflicts of interest, falling for hoaxes, and overt bias. Some are
hilarious, such as an action figure doll being mistaken for a real soldier.
Some are silly, such as reporting on a baseball game watched on TV. Some
are more serious.
I leave it to you to judge whether the internet damaged "journalism's
ability to do its job professionally", as Marvin Kalb accuses, or if the
internet has in fact helped expose an already damaged "profession".
I doubt if my list is comprehensive, but I think it's a good start. So that
I'm not accused of plagiarism myself, I would like to give credit to
Wikipedia for many of the entries on this list. And all the information
below can be found with a little internet searching; I just could not find
it all in one place. I do give at least one source for each item, embedded
in the text.
1.. Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press (2005). Lying/fabricating. In his
sports column, he described alumni players at a basketball game who were not
even there.
2.. Stephen Ambrose, historian/author (2002). Plagiarism. He was almost
a book "factory", writing eight books in five years. But that apparently
came easier when parts were copied from other books, without attribution.
3.. Associated Press (AP) (2005). Fell for hoax and phony photo. The AP
ran a story, with a photo, about a soldier held hostage in Iraq. The photo
turned out to be that of an action figure doll; there was no such soldier.
4.. Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe (1998). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism.
Totally made up stories, including one about a black kid and a white kid
with cancer. Also used quotes from George Carlin as his own. Fired from
the Boston Globe.
5.. Maria Bartiromo, CNBC (2007). Conflict of interest. She dated a
Citicorp executive and received special treatment from him, and also owned
stock in Citicorp while doing financial reporting for CNBC, including
reporting on Citicorp.
6.. Scott Beauchamp, The New Republic (2007). Lying. TNR hired this U.S.
Army private and husband of one of its own reporters to write first-hand
accounts from Iraq. One of his accounts, supposedly demonstrating the
dehumanizing effects of the Iraq war on him and fellow soldiers, occurred in
Kuwait before Beauchamp even entered Iraq. Other parts of his writing are
likely false, and if not, constitute military crimes on his part. In fact,
his anonymous writing from a war zone is likely against military rules.
This story is currently unfolding.
7.. Nada Behziz, The Bakersfield Californian (2005). Lying/fabricating
and plagiarism. Writing mostly on health issues, she plagiarized from the
New York Times and AP, made up sources, and got basic facts wrong. An
investigation counted 29 fabricated or plagiarized articles. She also lied
on her resume. She was fired.
8.. Michael Bellesiles, professor of history, author of Arming America and
recipient of Columbia University's Bancroft Prize. Lying/fabricating. He
made "myth shattering" claims about the history of guns in America that were
based on fabricated historical records. He resigned from Emory University.
9.. Joe Biden, U.S. Senator and candidate for President (1988).
Plagiarism. He withdrew from the 1988 presidential race after being
discovered "delivering, without attribution, passages from a speech by
British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock... a serious plagiarism incident
involving Biden during his law school years; the senator's boastful
exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event; and
the discovery of other quotations in Biden's speeches pilfered from past
Democratic politicians." He's still a Senator, and back in the race for
2008.
10.. Jayson Blair, The New York Times (2003). Lying/fabricating. He
fabricated parts or all of at least 36 stories. He, along with his bosses
Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines, resigned from the NYT.
11.. The Boston Globe (2004). Fake photos, fake story. The Boston Globe
published pictures alleging U.S. troops raped Iraqi women. The pictures
turned out to be commercially available pornography.
12.. Paul Bradley Richmond Times-Dispatch (2006). Lying/fabricating.
Made up his story on reactions to President Bush's speech on immigration.
He fabricated interviews. He reported on an event in the first person, yet
he was not even in the same town. He was fired.
13.. Rick Bragg, The New York Times (2003). "Drive-by" reporting.
"Bragg's defense -- that it is common for Times correspondents to slip in
and out of cities to 'get the dateline' while relying on the work of
stringers, researchers, interns and clerks -- has sparked more passionate
disagreement than the clear-cut fraud and plagiarism committed by Blair. The
issue, put starkly, is whether readers are being misled about how and where
a story was reported." He resigned.
14.. Fox Butterfield, New York Times (2000). Lying/fabricating and
plagiarism. In 2003, a federal jury ruled that "the New York Times and one
of its reporters libeled an Ohio Supreme Court justice" in an article
published April 13, 2000. The jury found that the article was "not
substantially true". He also "had lifted material from a story in The
Boston Globe while reporting, ironically, on plagiarism by a Boston
University dean".
15.. Thom Calandra, Marketwatch.com (2005). Conflict of interest. He
profited by selling stocks shortly after giving them positive write-ups in
his newsletter. The SEC brought suit against him, which was settled.
16.. Jimmy Carter, former U.S. President, Nobel Peace Prize winner and
author of Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. Lying, plagiarism, bias. His
book was so full of errors, including doctored maps, that his chief
collaborator, Kenneth Stein of Emory University, resigned his position with
the Carter Center. Carter's book was condemned by Alan Dershowitz and the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others.
17.. CBS, Dan Rather, Mary Mapes (2004). Fell for fake documents. CBS
used forged documents from a non-credible source in claiming George W. Bush
received favored treatment in the Air National Guard.
18.. Chris Cecil, Cartersville Daily News (2005). Plagiarism. "The
associate managing editor of a small Georgia newspaper was fired for
plagiarizing articles by a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Miami
Herald, including copying a passage about his mother's battle with cancer.
Chris Cecil, 28, was fired from The Daily Tribune News of Cartersville on
Thursday after the Herald pointed out six to eight columns written since
March that contained portions from work by Leonard Pitts Jr."
19.. Philip Chien, Wired News (2006). Lying/fabricating. He made up
sources and quotes in at least three articles. Wired withdrew the stories.
20.. Ward Churchill, Chairman of Ethnic Studies at the University of
Colorado. Lying and plagiarism. He lied about his credentials and ethnic
background to get a job in the first place. His "research" was laden with
fabricated evidence, plagiarism and referencing his own previous writings
under pseudonyms. He is worthy of Mary McCarthy's quote about Lillian
Hellman: "Every word (s)he writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." He
was fired.
21.. CNN, Operation Tailwind, CNN NewsStand (1998). Lying/fabricating.
The televised special claimed that the U.S. military used nerve gas in a
mission to kill American defectors in Laos during the Vietnam War, but the
story had no factual support. CNN later retracted the story.
22.. CNN and Eason Jordan (2003). Admitted bias, slanting the news.
Eason Jordan, CNN's news chief, admitted that CNN withheld reporting on
Saddam Hussein's atrocities so as to continue getting favored treatment from
Saddam.
23.. Janet Cooke, Washington Post (1980-1981), Pulitzer Prize winner.
Lying/fabricating. Her series on "Jimmy's World" about an 8-year-old heroin
addict was totally made up.
24.. Katie Couric, "Katie Couric's Notebook," CBSNews.com (2007).
Plagiarism. In the first place, her blog is largely written by someone
else. That someone else copied material from The Wall Street Journal,
without attribution.
25.. The Daily Egyptian (2005). Fell for hoax. This student newspaper
wrote a series about the family of a soldier in Iraq who subsequently died,
except that the whole thing was made up.
26.. Allan Detrich, The Toledo Blade (2007). Doctored photos. He
submitted 79 photographs that were altered. "The changes Mr. Detrich made
included erasing people, tree limbs, utility poles, electrical wires,
electrical outlets, and other background elements from photographs. In
other cases, he added elements such as tree branches and shrubbery." He
resigned.
27.. Stephen Dunphy, Seattle Times associate editor and business columnist
(2004). Plagiarism. He used significant quotes (e.g., seven paragraphs at
a time) from other sources on multiple occasions. He resigned.
28.. Walter Duranty, The New York Times (1930s), Pulitzer Prize winner.
Lying. This man visited Stalin's Russia and wrote that nothing untoward was
happening there -- no famine, etc. In fact, up to 10 million people died in
the Ukraine famine. His writings matched Russian propaganda almost exactly.
His Pulitzer Prize still stands.
29.. Joseph Ellis, professor at Mount Holyoke College and historian/author
(2001), Pulitzer Prize winner. Lying. He falsely claimed military service
in Vietnam and incorporated his war "experiences" into his college courses
on "The Vietnam War and American Culture". Mount Holyoke censured him and
suspended him without pay for one year.
30.. Jacob Epstein, novelist (1980). Plagiarism. "Jacob Epstein,
responding to charges that he had plagiarized from Martin Amis's The Rachel
Papers for his first novel, Wild Oats, has apologized, admitting that he had
indeed copied passages and images from Mr. Amis, and from other writers, as
well."
31.. Diana Griego Erwin , Sacramento Bee (2005), lying/fabricating. The
Bee was "unable to verify the existence of 43 people she named in her
columns". She resigned.
32.. Hassan Fattah, New York Times (2006). Fell for a hoax. Did a front
page story about the man in one of the famous Abu Ghraib photos. But it
turned out that the man who claimed to be the one in the picture, who
provided details for the story, was not the one in the picture at all.
33.. James Forlong, Sky News (2003). Fake story, fake footage. He
presented footage from a missile test as actual combat in Iraq. He
subsequently committed suicide.
34.. Jay Forman, Slate (2001). Fake story. He wrote an article
describing the fictitious sport of Monkey Fishing as real. Slate later
published an apology and admitted details were fictitious.
35.. James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, Oprah Book Club.
Lying. Virtually the entire "nonfiction memoir" of his vomit-caked years as
an alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal was fabricated.
36.. Michael Gallagher, The Cincinnati Enquirer (1998). Information
theft. "Mike Gallagher had illegally tapped into Chiquita's voice mail
system and used information he obtained as a result in stories questioning
Chiquita's business practices in Latin America." The paper agreed to pay
Chiquita Brands International over $10 million and run an apology on the
front page three times.
37.. Stephen Glass, The New Republic (1998). Lying. "Glass, a
25-year-old rising star at The New Republic, wrote dozens of high-profile
articles for a number of national publications in which he made things
up...he made up people, places and events. He made up organizations and
quotations. Sometimes, he made up entire articles. And to back it all up,
he created fake notes, fake voicemails, fake faxes, even a fake Web site -
whatever it took to deceive his editors, not to mention hundreds of
thousands of readers." He was fired.
38.. Jacqueline Gonzalez, San Antonio Express News (2007). Plagiarism.
She admitted "she used, without attribution, information from a Web site for
a Christmas Day column. Later research uncovered further examples of
plagiarism in two other columns."
39.. Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian/author (2002). Plagiarism. Large
portions of her book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, were lifted from
multiple other sources without attribution. She took a leave of absence
from PBS.
40.. Adnan Hajj, Reuters (2006). Doctored photos. He doctored dozens of
pictures of the 2006 Lebanon-Israel conflict. Reuters later withdrew all
920 of his photos from sale.
41.. Alex Haley (1977) , Pulitzer Prize winning author of Roots.
Plagiarism. He settled a lawsuit for $650,000, admitting that large
passages of Roots were copied from the book The African by Harold
Courlander.
42.. Mark Halperin, ABC News (2004). Admitted bias. He wrote a memo to
news staff telling them to hold George Bush to a stricter standard than John
Kerry: "Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and makes] mistakes all the
time, but these are not central to his efforts to win. We have a
responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but
that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally'
accountable when the facts don't warrant that."
43.. Jack Hitt, New York Times (2006). Lying, or at least really sloppy
research. He wrote a story about a woman in El Salvador who was sentenced
to prison for having an abortion when she was 18 weeks pregnant. It turned
out that "her child was carried to term, was born alive and died in its
first minutes of life." In short, her crime was infanticide, not abortion.
44.. Houston Chronicle, Light Rail Controversy (2002). Admitted bias. An
internal memo outlined how the paper would promote the light rail project in
Houston and do research into Tom Delay and other light rail opponents. That
would be creating the news rather than reporting it.
45.. Eason Jordan, CNN (2005). False accusations. He accused U.S. forces
in Iraq of deliberately targeting and killing journalists. He apologized
and resigned.
46.. Jack Kelley , USA Today (2004). Lying. USA Today concluded of "the
star" of its news staff: "Jack Kelley's dishonest reporting dates back at
least as far as 1991."
47.. Jesse MacBeth, anti-war star (2006). Lying/fabricating. "Jesse
MacBeth stoked opposition to the Iraq war in 2006 when he spoke out about
atrocities he committed as a U.S. Army Ranger serving as part of Operation
Iraqi Freedom. MacBeth, 23, of Tacoma, claimed to have killed more than 200
people, many at close range, some as they prayed in a mosque. He spoke at
an anti-war rally in Tacoma and appeared in a 20-minute anti-war video that
circulated widely on the Internet. Trouble is, none of MacBeth's claims was
true."
48.. Rigoberta Menchu, author of I, Rigoberta (1983), Nobel Peace Prize
winner (1992). Lying/fabricating. She claimed her autobiographical book
"is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality
of a whole people." However, "Mench
It's Not Just Scott Beauchamp
By Randall Hoven
"Matt Drudge's role in the Monica Lewinski scandal] strikes me as a new
and graphic power of the Internet to influence mainstream journalism. And I
suspect that over the next couple of years that impact will grow to the
point where it will damage journalism's ability to do its job
professionally, to check out information before publication, to be mindful
of the necessity to publish and broadcast reliable, substantiated
information." -- Marvin Kalb in 1998
Scott Beauchamp was the last straw. I realized that I need a scorecard to
keep track of all the fallen journalists, journalistic mistakes and major
and minor screw-ups in the media. I couldn't find one already made,
although Wikipedia came close, so I started my own. I apologize if there is
a good list already out there, but I looked and could not find.
Offenses include lying and fabricating, doctoring photos, plagiarism,
conflicts of interest, falling for hoaxes, and overt bias. Some are
hilarious, such as an action figure doll being mistaken for a real soldier.
Some are silly, such as reporting on a baseball game watched on TV. Some
are more serious.
I leave it to you to judge whether the internet damaged "journalism's
ability to do its job professionally", as Marvin Kalb accuses, or if the
internet has in fact helped expose an already damaged "profession".
I doubt if my list is comprehensive, but I think it's a good start. So that
I'm not accused of plagiarism myself, I would like to give credit to
Wikipedia for many of the entries on this list. And all the information
below can be found with a little internet searching; I just could not find
it all in one place. I do give at least one source for each item, embedded
in the text.
1.. Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press (2005). Lying/fabricating. In his
sports column, he described alumni players at a basketball game who were not
even there.
2.. Stephen Ambrose, historian/author (2002). Plagiarism. He was almost
a book "factory", writing eight books in five years. But that apparently
came easier when parts were copied from other books, without attribution.
3.. Associated Press (AP) (2005). Fell for hoax and phony photo. The AP
ran a story, with a photo, about a soldier held hostage in Iraq. The photo
turned out to be that of an action figure doll; there was no such soldier.
4.. Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe (1998). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism.
Totally made up stories, including one about a black kid and a white kid
with cancer. Also used quotes from George Carlin as his own. Fired from
the Boston Globe.
5.. Maria Bartiromo, CNBC (2007). Conflict of interest. She dated a
Citicorp executive and received special treatment from him, and also owned
stock in Citicorp while doing financial reporting for CNBC, including
reporting on Citicorp.
6.. Scott Beauchamp, The New Republic (2007). Lying. TNR hired this U.S.
Army private and husband of one of its own reporters to write first-hand
accounts from Iraq. One of his accounts, supposedly demonstrating the
dehumanizing effects of the Iraq war on him and fellow soldiers, occurred in
Kuwait before Beauchamp even entered Iraq. Other parts of his writing are
likely false, and if not, constitute military crimes on his part. In fact,
his anonymous writing from a war zone is likely against military rules.
This story is currently unfolding.
7.. Nada Behziz, The Bakersfield Californian (2005). Lying/fabricating
and plagiarism. Writing mostly on health issues, she plagiarized from the
New York Times and AP, made up sources, and got basic facts wrong. An
investigation counted 29 fabricated or plagiarized articles. She also lied
on her resume. She was fired.
8.. Michael Bellesiles, professor of history, author of Arming America and
recipient of Columbia University's Bancroft Prize. Lying/fabricating. He
made "myth shattering" claims about the history of guns in America that were
based on fabricated historical records. He resigned from Emory University.
9.. Joe Biden, U.S. Senator and candidate for President (1988).
Plagiarism. He withdrew from the 1988 presidential race after being
discovered "delivering, without attribution, passages from a speech by
British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock... a serious plagiarism incident
involving Biden during his law school years; the senator's boastful
exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event; and
the discovery of other quotations in Biden's speeches pilfered from past
Democratic politicians." He's still a Senator, and back in the race for
2008.
10.. Jayson Blair, The New York Times (2003). Lying/fabricating. He
fabricated parts or all of at least 36 stories. He, along with his bosses
Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines, resigned from the NYT.
11.. The Boston Globe (2004). Fake photos, fake story. The Boston Globe
published pictures alleging U.S. troops raped Iraqi women. The pictures
turned out to be commercially available pornography.
12.. Paul Bradley Richmond Times-Dispatch (2006). Lying/fabricating.
Made up his story on reactions to President Bush's speech on immigration.
He fabricated interviews. He reported on an event in the first person, yet
he was not even in the same town. He was fired.
13.. Rick Bragg, The New York Times (2003). "Drive-by" reporting.
"Bragg's defense -- that it is common for Times correspondents to slip in
and out of cities to 'get the dateline' while relying on the work of
stringers, researchers, interns and clerks -- has sparked more passionate
disagreement than the clear-cut fraud and plagiarism committed by Blair. The
issue, put starkly, is whether readers are being misled about how and where
a story was reported." He resigned.
14.. Fox Butterfield, New York Times (2000). Lying/fabricating and
plagiarism. In 2003, a federal jury ruled that "the New York Times and one
of its reporters libeled an Ohio Supreme Court justice" in an article
published April 13, 2000. The jury found that the article was "not
substantially true". He also "had lifted material from a story in The
Boston Globe while reporting, ironically, on plagiarism by a Boston
University dean".
15.. Thom Calandra, Marketwatch.com (2005). Conflict of interest. He
profited by selling stocks shortly after giving them positive write-ups in
his newsletter. The SEC brought suit against him, which was settled.
16.. Jimmy Carter, former U.S. President, Nobel Peace Prize winner and
author of Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. Lying, plagiarism, bias. His
book was so full of errors, including doctored maps, that his chief
collaborator, Kenneth Stein of Emory University, resigned his position with
the Carter Center. Carter's book was condemned by Alan Dershowitz and the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others.
17.. CBS, Dan Rather, Mary Mapes (2004). Fell for fake documents. CBS
used forged documents from a non-credible source in claiming George W. Bush
received favored treatment in the Air National Guard.
18.. Chris Cecil, Cartersville Daily News (2005). Plagiarism. "The
associate managing editor of a small Georgia newspaper was fired for
plagiarizing articles by a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Miami
Herald, including copying a passage about his mother's battle with cancer.
Chris Cecil, 28, was fired from The Daily Tribune News of Cartersville on
Thursday after the Herald pointed out six to eight columns written since
March that contained portions from work by Leonard Pitts Jr."
19.. Philip Chien, Wired News (2006). Lying/fabricating. He made up
sources and quotes in at least three articles. Wired withdrew the stories.
20.. Ward Churchill, Chairman of Ethnic Studies at the University of
Colorado. Lying and plagiarism. He lied about his credentials and ethnic
background to get a job in the first place. His "research" was laden with
fabricated evidence, plagiarism and referencing his own previous writings
under pseudonyms. He is worthy of Mary McCarthy's quote about Lillian
Hellman: "Every word (s)he writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." He
was fired.
21.. CNN, Operation Tailwind, CNN NewsStand (1998). Lying/fabricating.
The televised special claimed that the U.S. military used nerve gas in a
mission to kill American defectors in Laos during the Vietnam War, but the
story had no factual support. CNN later retracted the story.
22.. CNN and Eason Jordan (2003). Admitted bias, slanting the news.
Eason Jordan, CNN's news chief, admitted that CNN withheld reporting on
Saddam Hussein's atrocities so as to continue getting favored treatment from
Saddam.
23.. Janet Cooke, Washington Post (1980-1981), Pulitzer Prize winner.
Lying/fabricating. Her series on "Jimmy's World" about an 8-year-old heroin
addict was totally made up.
24.. Katie Couric, "Katie Couric's Notebook," CBSNews.com (2007).
Plagiarism. In the first place, her blog is largely written by someone
else. That someone else copied material from The Wall Street Journal,
without attribution.
25.. The Daily Egyptian (2005). Fell for hoax. This student newspaper
wrote a series about the family of a soldier in Iraq who subsequently died,
except that the whole thing was made up.
26.. Allan Detrich, The Toledo Blade (2007). Doctored photos. He
submitted 79 photographs that were altered. "The changes Mr. Detrich made
included erasing people, tree limbs, utility poles, electrical wires,
electrical outlets, and other background elements from photographs. In
other cases, he added elements such as tree branches and shrubbery." He
resigned.
27.. Stephen Dunphy, Seattle Times associate editor and business columnist
(2004). Plagiarism. He used significant quotes (e.g., seven paragraphs at
a time) from other sources on multiple occasions. He resigned.
28.. Walter Duranty, The New York Times (1930s), Pulitzer Prize winner.
Lying. This man visited Stalin's Russia and wrote that nothing untoward was
happening there -- no famine, etc. In fact, up to 10 million people died in
the Ukraine famine. His writings matched Russian propaganda almost exactly.
His Pulitzer Prize still stands.
29.. Joseph Ellis, professor at Mount Holyoke College and historian/author
(2001), Pulitzer Prize winner. Lying. He falsely claimed military service
in Vietnam and incorporated his war "experiences" into his college courses
on "The Vietnam War and American Culture". Mount Holyoke censured him and
suspended him without pay for one year.
30.. Jacob Epstein, novelist (1980). Plagiarism. "Jacob Epstein,
responding to charges that he had plagiarized from Martin Amis's The Rachel
Papers for his first novel, Wild Oats, has apologized, admitting that he had
indeed copied passages and images from Mr. Amis, and from other writers, as
well."
31.. Diana Griego Erwin , Sacramento Bee (2005), lying/fabricating. The
Bee was "unable to verify the existence of 43 people she named in her
columns". She resigned.
32.. Hassan Fattah, New York Times (2006). Fell for a hoax. Did a front
page story about the man in one of the famous Abu Ghraib photos. But it
turned out that the man who claimed to be the one in the picture, who
provided details for the story, was not the one in the picture at all.
33.. James Forlong, Sky News (2003). Fake story, fake footage. He
presented footage from a missile test as actual combat in Iraq. He
subsequently committed suicide.
34.. Jay Forman, Slate (2001). Fake story. He wrote an article
describing the fictitious sport of Monkey Fishing as real. Slate later
published an apology and admitted details were fictitious.
35.. James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, Oprah Book Club.
Lying. Virtually the entire "nonfiction memoir" of his vomit-caked years as
an alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal was fabricated.
36.. Michael Gallagher, The Cincinnati Enquirer (1998). Information
theft. "Mike Gallagher had illegally tapped into Chiquita's voice mail
system and used information he obtained as a result in stories questioning
Chiquita's business practices in Latin America." The paper agreed to pay
Chiquita Brands International over $10 million and run an apology on the
front page three times.
37.. Stephen Glass, The New Republic (1998). Lying. "Glass, a
25-year-old rising star at The New Republic, wrote dozens of high-profile
articles for a number of national publications in which he made things
up...he made up people, places and events. He made up organizations and
quotations. Sometimes, he made up entire articles. And to back it all up,
he created fake notes, fake voicemails, fake faxes, even a fake Web site -
whatever it took to deceive his editors, not to mention hundreds of
thousands of readers." He was fired.
38.. Jacqueline Gonzalez, San Antonio Express News (2007). Plagiarism.
She admitted "she used, without attribution, information from a Web site for
a Christmas Day column. Later research uncovered further examples of
plagiarism in two other columns."
39.. Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian/author (2002). Plagiarism. Large
portions of her book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, were lifted from
multiple other sources without attribution. She took a leave of absence
from PBS.
40.. Adnan Hajj, Reuters (2006). Doctored photos. He doctored dozens of
pictures of the 2006 Lebanon-Israel conflict. Reuters later withdrew all
920 of his photos from sale.
41.. Alex Haley (1977) , Pulitzer Prize winning author of Roots.
Plagiarism. He settled a lawsuit for $650,000, admitting that large
passages of Roots were copied from the book The African by Harold
Courlander.
42.. Mark Halperin, ABC News (2004). Admitted bias. He wrote a memo to
news staff telling them to hold George Bush to a stricter standard than John
Kerry: "Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and makes] mistakes all the
time, but these are not central to his efforts to win. We have a
responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but
that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally'
accountable when the facts don't warrant that."
43.. Jack Hitt, New York Times (2006). Lying, or at least really sloppy
research. He wrote a story about a woman in El Salvador who was sentenced
to prison for having an abortion when she was 18 weeks pregnant. It turned
out that "her child was carried to term, was born alive and died in its
first minutes of life." In short, her crime was infanticide, not abortion.
44.. Houston Chronicle, Light Rail Controversy (2002). Admitted bias. An
internal memo outlined how the paper would promote the light rail project in
Houston and do research into Tom Delay and other light rail opponents. That
would be creating the news rather than reporting it.
45.. Eason Jordan, CNN (2005). False accusations. He accused U.S. forces
in Iraq of deliberately targeting and killing journalists. He apologized
and resigned.
46.. Jack Kelley , USA Today (2004). Lying. USA Today concluded of "the
star" of its news staff: "Jack Kelley's dishonest reporting dates back at
least as far as 1991."
47.. Jesse MacBeth, anti-war star (2006). Lying/fabricating. "Jesse
MacBeth stoked opposition to the Iraq war in 2006 when he spoke out about
atrocities he committed as a U.S. Army Ranger serving as part of Operation
Iraqi Freedom. MacBeth, 23, of Tacoma, claimed to have killed more than 200
people, many at close range, some as they prayed in a mosque. He spoke at
an anti-war rally in Tacoma and appeared in a 20-minute anti-war video that
circulated widely on the Internet. Trouble is, none of MacBeth's claims was
true."
48.. Rigoberta Menchu, author of I, Rigoberta (1983), Nobel Peace Prize
winner (1992). Lying/fabricating. She claimed her autobiographical book
"is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality
of a whole people." However, "Mench