What is your response to these journalists?

Name: Jayson Blair


Publication: The New York Times


Busted: May 2003


Offense: The undisputed heavyweight champion of journalistic fakers did more than pilfer quotes from The Washington Post, borrow phrasing from the AP, and plagiarize The San Antonio Express-News (the event that solidified his downfall). When pressed for deadlines, Blair simply made up breaking stories. Among his best work was the front-page exclusive that claimed D.C. sniper suspect John Lee Malvo’s DNA had been identified on grape stems found near one of the crime scenes. In an interview with The New York Observer, Blair explained that his penchant for alcohol was one of the reasons he turned to fiction: “I was drunk on assignment.”


Cashing In: Literary agent David Vigliano is fielding book and movie offers for Blair, and reportedly is already showing publishers a sample chapter from Blair’s inevitable tell-all memoir. Ka-ching!


Name: Stephen Glass


Publication: The New Republic


Busted: May 1998


Offense: Glass became the young hot shot of the New Republic staff after a string of sensational stories, including a piece on The First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ, an expose on the immoral shenanigans taking place at a religious retreat, and a story on a group of investment bankers who had erected a shrine to Alan Greenspan in their office. The only problem: None of these events happened. An investigation turned up fabrications in 27 of Glass’ 41 bylined articles. Only after an editor forced Glass to take him to the site of one of his tall tales did the writer break down and admit his deceptions.


Cashing In: Glass earned a reported six-figures for his new Simon %26amp; Schuster novel (about a young hot shot reporter who makes up his best stories), The Fabulist. Glass also sold his story to Hollywood. Shattered Glass, starring Hayden Christensen in the title role, hits theatres this October.


Name: Janet Cooke


Publication: The Washington Post


Busted: April 1981


Offense: In late 1980, Cooke ran a heartbreaking story about “Jimmy,” an eight-year-old heroin addict. Alarmed activists demanded to know where the boy lived, so that he might be helped, but Cooke claimed that the boy’s life (as well as her own) would be endangered if she revealed her sources. The pressure to name the boy grew more intense when the story was awarded a coveted Pulitzer Prize. Finally, after a heated confrontation with her editors – during which the veracity of several academic credentials on her resume were also questioned – Cooke admitted that the whole story was made up.


Cashing In: Disgraced, Cooke left Washington and the world of writing. At first, the only job she could land was behind a fragrance counter in a department store. But after several years of reclusive living, Cooke sold her story to GQ, and later to Columbia Tri-Star Pictures for a reported $380,000


Name: Patricia Smith


Publication: The Boston Globe


Busted: June 1998


Offense: During what editors described as a “routine review” of Smith’s work, it was discovered that she had fabricated quotes in four recent columns. This shocking news came only weeks after Smith had been announced as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In a statement following her resignation, the chagrined columnist said, “From time to time in my metro column, to create the desired impact or slam home a salient point, I attributed quotes to people who didn’t exist.” Oops. The revelation prompted the American Society of Newspaper Editors to rescind an award they had given her earlier that year.


CASHING IN: Although her career as a journalist was destroyed by the scandal, Smith’s moonlighting gig as a poet went unharmed. Three volumes of her work have been released since the scandal, and all have sold well.


Name: Mike Barnicle


Publication: The Boston Globe


Busted: August 1998


Offense: After Patricia Smith was canned by the Globe, the paper announced that it would review the work of all their columnists, for good measure. Among those reviewed was Mike Barnicle, a controversial figure who had already settled a lawsuit with Alan Dershowitz over allegedly falsified quotes and been accused of plagiarism by Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko. The investigation found that Barnicle had lifted jokes verbatim from George Carlin’s book, Brain Droppings, copied passages from A.J. Liebling’s book, The Earl of Louisiana, and had invented key elements of a story about two cancer-stricken boys. Barnicle was fired after he refused to resign.


CASHING IN: Barnicle went on to become a weekly columnist for The New York Daily News. He is also a cable-TV staple, offering commentary and frequently guest-hosting Hardball with Chris Matthews.


Name: Michael Finkel


Publication: The New York Times Magazine


Busted: February 2002


Offense: In 2001, Finkel spent three weeks in the Congo investigating tales of child slave labor on plantations. The riveting article that trip produced, “Is Youssouf Male a Slave?” not only profiled a 14-year-old cocoa farm slave, but included a photograph of the boy. Nothing seemed out of place until a group called Save the Children claimed to have located the boy in the photo… and it wasn’t Youssouf Male. After first sticking by his story, Finkel eventually admitted that Male was a composite of many boys he had met on his trip. Even after his resignation from the Times, Finkel stuck by the facts of his story. “I didn’t want to inundate the readers with complexities and numbers. I wanted the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts and felt, wrongly, that a greater truth could emerge using this technique. I know that the article, at least in spirit, accurately reflects the situation among the young farm laborers of West Africa.”


Cashing In: Dropped from the Times, Finkel wasted no time in combining the story of his deception with the story of Christian Longo, a man who killed his wife, fled to Mexico, and then assumed the identity of “Michael Finkel, New York Times reporter.” The interweaving tales made for a great read, and HarperCollins bought Finkel’s manuscript for a reported $300,000.


Name: Christopher Newton


Publication: Associated Press


Busted: September 2002


Offense: Newton’s trail of journalistic trickery was uncovered after he wrote an article on declining crime rates that quoted two men, Bruce Fenmore of the Institute for Crime and Punishment in Chicago and Ralph Myers of Stanford University. When reporters from The New York Times and three other publications sought out these men for follow-up stories, it was discovered that neither man (nor the Chicago institute) existed. An AP investigation found similarly manufactured quotes in more than 40 of Newton’s other stories. Upon being confronted by his editors, Newton denied that any of his sources were made-up… and then resigned.


Cashing In:In America, anyone can cash in on their misfortune if they simply admit their wrongdoing with a marginally believable tone of contrition. But Newton seems to be taking the Pete Rose approach, saying, “I was not given an opportunity to account for the names of those people The AP did not find. I am pursuing the situation with an attorney. We have already located some of those people The AP says do not exist.”


Name: Tom Junod


Publication: Esquire


Busted: June 2001


Offense: Junod’s profile of REM lead-singer Michael Stipe raised eyebrows with the revelations that Stipe ate an entire dispenser of sugar during their meeting, chartered a limo for a five-hour ride to the Hoover dam, and incessantly sucked on pennies, which he often stuck to his eyelids. An uproar over the article forced Junod to admit that he made up large portions of his story. But this story doesn’t end like the others. Upon his revelation, Esquire chose to defend Junod, claiming that the farce was “given away” with a subtle sub-headline and claiming (rather unbelievably) that “in the first place, one of our duties is to amuse and entertain our audience.” Objective achieved… sort of.


Cashing In: The furor over Junod’s actions never slowed down his career. Or his attitude. Says Junod, “Hell, in order to make him a great mythic rock-’n’-roller, it’s almost as if you have to make half the story up. So that’s what I did.”


Name: Marcia Stepanek


Publication: BusinessWeek


Busted: January 2001


Offense: Stepanek, a 20-year veteran of the reporting scene, sabotaged her reputation when an article she filed for BusinessWeek about the company Pharmatrak bore more than a striking resemblance to a similar piece that ran months earlier in The Washington Post. Confronted by her bosses, Stepanek denied having ever read the Post story and blamed the similarities on sloppy notes. BusinessWeek was unsatisfied with her explanation, fired her, and ran a retraction that apologized for using “information and wording without proper attribution.”


Cashing In: The scandal hardly dented Stepanek’s career. Within three months of her dismissal, she was hired by Ziff-Davis as executive editor of CIO Insight, a position she still holds today.


Name: Julie Amparano


Publication: The Arizona Republic


Busted: August 1999


Offense: Amparano, who wrote three columns a week for the Republic, was canned for allegedly conjuring her sources from thin air. Amparano may have never been caught, but in a stunning lapse of judgment, she actually used one fake source (“Jennifer Morgan”) on multiple occasions. Despite the seemingly obvious transgression, Amparano firmly defended her actions, claiming, “I think this has been just very unfair to my name and credibility.” (No, really?). Amparano also claimed that the private investigator hired by the Republic couldn’t track down her sources because “they are real people, and real people are sometimes hard to find.”


Cashing In: Amparano left the Republic to become President and CEO of AmericanLatino.net, a website devoted to Hispanic news and issues. Despite rumors to the contrary, Jennifer Morgan is not a staff writer for that same publication.

What is your response to these journalists?
Every barrel of apples has one or two bad apples in it, and you have just named a couple of them.





Fortunately all reporters, and columnists are not like them, and try to report fairly, and accurately.