A German journalist is the latest in a long string caught fabricating stories, inventing people and quotes.
I’m a retired journalist and I’ve been surrounded by such scandals since the dawn of my career. The first time was in 1980 when I was fresh out of journalism school at the University of New Mexico. Novelist Tony Hillerman, who wrote detective stories set on Native American reservations, taught my course on journalism ethics. He was one of those archaic professors who told us to keep personal bias out and to present both sides of a controversial story.
I was visiting my parents at the time in Washington D.C. They subscribed to the Washington Post and I happened to read Janet Cooke’s stunning Page One story “Jimmy’s World” about the the life of an eight-year-old heroin addict. I remember few stories I’ve read, but this one moved me. I knew I was incapable of reporting anything that good and I would have been envious had I known Cooke was but a year older than myself. “Jimmy’s World” went on to win the Pulitzer Prize––for journalism, not literature. Cooke returned the prize.
I took a more traditional route of hard knocks out of college, working at the San Angelo Standard-Times, the Santa Fe New Mexican and the El Paso Times, learning the craft before landing at the nation’s largest newspaper USA Today. Back then, USA Today prided itself on being politically neutral, even giving opposing opinions to editorials and never endorsing any candidate for president––until Hillary Clinton in 2016.
I was at USA Today when Jack Kelley was caught fabricating stories. Once Kelley resigned, many reporters said they’d always been amazed at how he could land in a foreign country and within a day turn a remarkable, well-written story. As it turned out, he was writing them on the plane while en route.
I’ve always wondered what drove people like the German Claas Relotius, Kelley and Jayson Blair at the New York Times to fabricate. It’s a reason why I recently wrote the historical novel The Cremation of Sam McGee.
I made the narrator a fabricating reporter to try to get inside his head. I placed the novel in 1898 at the height of yellow journalism when the Spanish-American War was started by a New York newspaper war. Newspapers reported that the U.S.S. Maine was sunk by Spain when, in fact, the Maine blew itself up.
Chapter One of The Cremation of Sam McGee can be read here and the book can be ordered here. I’m available for interviews and can be reached through my website.
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