Journalists Making Stuff Up
Now a journalist fired for fabricating has written a book about his ordeal when someone else — a murderer — scammed him by using his name soon after he was fired for the fabrication.
Michael Finkel tells On the Media he thought at the time he was serving a higher truth, but what this gets me to thinking is: With all the Jack Kelly, Michael Finkel, Steven Glass, Jason Blair, Janet Cooke and other fabricating journalists, how many are there that have gotten away with it? How many of us have knowingly made up a source, or put something in we didn’t know to be provably accurate?
I never did, to my knowledge, make anything up, but there were times when I felt an edit squeezed a story into a preconceived notion, a quote was used to fit that notion even as the nuance of the situation might have been different or more muddy. I also know that, when translating from other languages — something I’ve done from time to time as a journalist (one small example here) — there can be an array of accurate word choices. You’re not making anything up. You’re capturing the truth of a situation. But you also have some latitude.