Brief 4 - Plagiarism and Fabrication

Fabrication and Plagarism are dangerous subjects for a publication. Your stories are not worth anything if nobody believes them. Not to mention they can open your entire company up for lawsuits if you don't pursue this action. So when The Guardian found one of their reporters had fabricated sources and interviews, they took immediate action.

"After sources quoted in several stories denied speaking with a freelance reporter, Joseph Mayton, the Guardian has fact-checked all of his stories. We are taking down 13 and removing quotes and information that could not be verified"

This was a preemptive move to show the readers that they take fabrication very seriously. They hired an independent fact-checker to double check all of his sources and claims. And in case you're worried that Mayton was not given a fair chance, the Guardian writes...

"Our editors met with Mayton twice in person and emailed him dozens of times, giving him more than a month from the time the first allegations were presented to him to provide notes, phone records, contact information and other evidence. All evidence he provided has been taken into account, but he was unable or unwilling to provide information on most sources. "

And to put a nice bow on the whole ordeal, The Guardian came up with ways it could have prevented this mess. They wrote that they would commit to being more diligent in their background checks of who works for them. They also pledged to look into incidents where anonymous sources are used in stories where it is not necessary.

The main point the Guardian wanted to drive home in their article was that they were taking responsibility. A liar will lie to his bosses as well as the people who buy their paper, so one might assume that it is not fair to blame the bosses in question. But in the world of business, and especially in the realm of journalism, publications take responsibility for ethical breaches like these, even when it was against their knowledge. This way, the few people who blamed the Guardian for not being psychic have their concerns addressed, and the rest of the people see that The Guardian is committed to going above and beyond what is reasonable to ensure quality, truthful stories.

And when it comes to fabrication, some crooked reporters go even further to cover their tracks. Juan Thompson, an ex-reporter for The Intercept, allegedly created fake emails and impersonated false sources in order to deceive editors. Among his fake stories was an interview with the cousin of Dylan Roof, the Charleston shooter.

"Scott Roof, who identified himself as Dylann Roof’s cousin, told me over the telephone that “Dylann was normal until he started listening to that white power music stuff.” He also claimed that “he kind of went over the edge when a girl he liked starting dating a black guy two years back”...
“Dylann liked her,” Scott Roof said. “The black guy got her. He changed. I don’t know if we would be here if not …” Roof then abruptly hung up the phone"

It would certainly seem to contextualize all his actions into a neat box, which is a big clue that it's too good to be true. When asked about a cousin named Scott Roof, the Roof family denied his existence, along with any story of an ex-girlfriend leaving Dylan Roof for a black man.

The Intercept made a point to let their readers know how far Thompson went to deceive them, in order to keep the public's trust. Other fabrications by Thompson include lying about previous job experience. He now claims to have testicular cancer. And while I don't want to doubt a cancer survivor's suffering, I questions whether or not he's telling the truth here.