The American press has suffered another big, fat black eye with the news that a Boston Globe story was fabricated — and it comes at time when polls show newspapers held in increasingly low regard by the public.
In many parts of the country, newspaper circulations are plummeting or stagnant and journalists are being perceived as not nice or politically tainted. And now we have this:
A Boston Globe freelance writer fabricated large chunks of a story published this week, the newspaper said on Friday in the latest incident to embarrass the U.S. media.
The Globe, which is owned by The New York Times Co., said it stopped using writer Barbara Stewart because of a story that ran on Wednesday about a seasonal hunt for baby seals off Newfoundland — a hunt, it turns out, had not taken place.
It sounds as if the New York Times newspaper group — formerly home to Jayson Blair — needs to have editors who are perhaps a little less trusting and a bit more skeptical when it comes to shoving reports into their papers. MORE:
The story datelined Halifax, Nova Scotia described in graphic detail how the seal hunt began on Tuesday, with water turning red as hunters on some 300 boats shot harp seal cubs “by the hundreds.”
The problem, however, was that the hunt did not begin on Tuesday; it was delayed by bad weather and was scheduled to start on Friday, weather permitting, the Globe said in an editor’s note.
Stewart could not immediately be reached for comment.
It’s not a good sign when they don’t comment.
The newspaper, which received a complaint from the Canadian government, said it should not have published the story and should have insisted on attribution for details because the writer was not reporting from the scene.
“Details included the number of hunters, a description of the scene, and the approximate age of the cubs. The author’s failure to accurately report the status of the hunt and her fabrication of details at the scene are clear violations of the Globe’s journalistic standards,” it added.
Canada is extremely sensitive about the hunt, during which hundreds of thousands of seals are beaten to death or shot for their pelts every year. U.S. activists, who says the seals are killed inhumanely, are urging consumers to shun Canadian seafood until the hunt is stopped.
Canadian Fisheries Minister Geoff Regan said his officials had called the paper to point out the error.
“We’ve been trying to get the facts out about the seal harvest, the fact that the herd is very healthy … that in 98 percent of cases it (the hunt) is done in a humane way,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Quite a few people would question THAT assertion and they will counter it with facts that they have on their side. But that’s another issue for another day and the fabrication of this story certainly doesn’t “win” the Canadian government’s case for them on baby seal hunting. And what about the newspaper?
Officials with the newspaper were not immediately available for further comment.
It’s not a good sign when they don’t comment.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has a post that includes an extensive linked list of many of the other highly publicized black eyes given to the American press over the past few years.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.