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Journalistic scandal

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Journalistic fraud includes practices such as plagiarism, fabrication of quotes, facts, or other report details, staging or altering the event being putatively recorded, or anything else that may call the integrity and truthfulness of a piece of journalism into question. As their reputations for accuracy and truthfulness are arguably the most important assets of mass media outlets, many strictly enforce codes of journalistic ethics and carefully screen their reports for factual accuracy, publishing corrections even for minor errors soon after a story appears. When a case of journalistic fraud is discovered (especially at a prestigious media outlet), it is widely reported upon.

Cases of Journalistic Fraud

Janet Cooke (1980-1981)

Janet Cooke was a reporter for the Washington Post during the early 1980s. In 1980 her story, "Jimmy's World", about an 8 year old heroin addict, sparked a frenzied 17-day scouring of Washington, D.C. at the behest of then-Mayor Marion Barry, in search of child addicts: none was found. Nevertheless, the article won a 1981 Pulitzer Prize for journalism. Shortly afterward, Cooke confessed that "Jimmy" was a fabrication, claiming that he was a composite of several child addicts, and returned the prize. She also admitted to having padded her resume and resigned from the Post.

NBC Dateline (1992)

In a November 1992 segment on its Dateline news program called "Waiting to Explode", NBC showed a General Motors truck exploding after a low-speed side collision with another car. The explosion, though, was actually generated by hidden remote-controlled incendiary devices. GM sued and eventually won a settlement.

Stephen Glass (1998)

Stephen Glass was a reporter and associate editor for The New Republic magazine during the late 1990s. On May 8, 1998, Forbes Magazine presented The New Republic with evidence that Glass completely fabricated the story "Hack Heaven", a piece about a 15-year-old computer hacker who breaks into a large company's computer system and is then offered a job by the company. After an internal investigation determined that 27 of 41 articles he had written for the magazine contained fabricated material, Glass was fired. His story was dramatized in the 2003 film, Shattered Glass.

Patricia Smith (1998)

Shortly after the Glass affair, award-winning reporter Patricia Smith resigned from the Boston Globe. Smith, who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist that year, admitted to fabricating quotations.

CNN NewsStand (1998) - Operation Tailwind

On the June 7 edition of NewsStand, CNN reported that the US used nerve gas in Laos to kill American defectors during the Vietnam War. It retracted this statement on July 2.

Mike Barnicle (1998)

Mike Barnicle was a long-time journalist for the Boston Globe who was removed from his position at about the same time as colleague Patricia Smith. Barnicle was accused of violating several rules of reporting, but was removed from the Globe when it was discovered he fabricated quotes from parents of a sick child. Barnicle has continued to work on Chronicle, a local magazine show and sometimes hosts Hardball, has his own show on WTKK-FM 96.9 and writes columns for the New York Daily News. On March 8,2004, Barnicle was hired by the Globe's chief rival the Boston Herald. Source: Boston Globe, October 5, 1998, Op-Ed Page

Rigoberta Menchú (1999)

In 1983, Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú published an account of her country's bloody civil war called I, Rigoberta Menchú. In 1992, largely on account of this book, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Several years later anthropologist David Stoll conducted a series of interviews with Menchú's former acquaintances for a follow-up book. During this time he discovered that her account was largely fabricated. Specifically, Menchú was not self-taught (she received a middle-school education) and the land dispute in which her father was killed was with family members, not the government. No steps have been taken by the Nobel Committee to revoke Menchú's award, though.

Houston Chronicle (2002)

In late 2002 the Houston Chronicle accidentally posted an internal executive memorandum to its website. The memo contained materials that appeared to outline a plan for intentionally slanted reporting that promoted a pending bond referendum in the Houston, Texas metropolitan region. The memorandum was widely circulated and criticized in other Houston print and electronic media outlets, however paper quietly removed it from their website and made no further public comments about the incident (see article on Houston Chronicle Light Rail Scandal)

James Forlong (2003)

In April of 2003 Rupert Murdoch's Sky News Network carried a report from James Forlong aboard the British nuclear submarine HMS Splendid purportedly showing a live firing of a cruise missile, at sea in the Persian Gulf, during the Iraq war. The report included scenes of the crew members giving instructions related to the launch of the missile and included a sequence in which a crew member pressed a large red button marked with the word "FIRE" and accompanied by a sequence of a missile breaking the surface of the water and launching into the air. The report was a fabrication, with the crew acting along for the benefit of the cameras. The Sky News team did not accompany the submarine when it left port and the scenes were actually recorded whilst the vessel was docked. The shot of the missile breaking the surface has been obtained from stock footage.

The faked report was revealed because a BBC film crew did accompany the vessel to sea. The BBC crew filmed a real cruise missile launch for the BBC TV series Fighting the War. The BBC footage showed how, with modern computerised launching systems, a missile is not launched by pressing a red button but is actually launched with a left mouse click. The BBC passed the information onto The Guardian newspaper who broke the story on July 18, 2003.

James Forlong was suspended from Sky News pending an investigation . In October of 2003, he was found dead by his wife after commiting suicide by hanging. In December, Sky News were fined £50,000 by the Independent Television Commission for breaching accuracy regulations.

Jayson Blair (2003)

In early May 2003, New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned after being confronted with evidence of fabricating quotes and details in at least 36 articles. On June 5, 2003, Times executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd resigned as a result of this scandal.

Jack Kelley (2004)

In early 2004, an anonymous letter to editors of USA Today caused an internal investigation of one of its star reporters, Jack Kelley. The investigation found that Kelley had been fabricating stories or parts of stories since at least 1991. Several editors at the paper resigned due to this scandal.

Dan Rather (2004)

During the 2004 US presidential campaign, Dan Rather was responsible for using forged documents during a report on George W. Bush's Vietnam era service record. Dubbed "Rathergate" and "Memogate" by the internet blog community the reason for Rather's choice to stick by the Killian documents after widely being debated as forgeries was investigated. After investigation it is still unknown whether the documents were known or believed to be forged prior to 60 Minutes running the segment. The aftermath of the independant investigation's report released on January 10, 2005 led to the firing of producer of the original story Mary Mapes; Josh Howard, executive producer of 60 Minutes Wednesday, his top deputy Mary Murphy; and senior vice president Betsy West.

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